


Snakeeyes and Boxcars

by nekokoban



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Canon meets AU, F/M, Gen, I am so sorry, I tagged a pairing but it's complicated, M/M, Rule 63, actually the canon is kind of au too, casefic, fem!Jack, first time vs established, well I tried at least
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-05
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-11-28 06:54:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/671550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nekokoban/pseuds/nekokoban
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(And so began a great debate / as to whether chance or fate / could know the hearts of man.)</p>
<p>IN WHICH: Bunny is grouchy, Sandy is worried, North gets to indulge some of his more bloodthirsty impulses, Tooth is one of the few people with any common sense, and Jack just wants to go home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. and now a word from our sponsor

**Author's Note:**

> Lordy lordy, it's a long story. I apologize for everything in advance. 'A'

Ladies and gentlemen, and everyone in between!

Would you like to make a bet?

Let's say that you took a single point in existence. Let's say it's the birth of a single person. Let's say that this person could walk two different paths, and they go in the same direction. Maybe sometimes they overlap, even if they always split apart again. Two separate lives -- and sometimes more -- for a single person, all of whom started as a single core self and branched outwards.

Shall we wager whether or not this person will have the same sort of friends, the same sort of loves, the same elements of self? Say there is a reason the two paths are different. Say it's just a single small thing, and that is the birth of potential. If the first conditions are too vague, let's drill down. From that moment of potential, let us turn our eyes and seek out the Big Event, the thing that they say helped shape this entire universe. It's a force of attraction, the stuff that pulls things together and holds them close. That's the same stuff that inspires creation and destruction, because let's be honest, _you_ know and _I_ know those are both important.

Let's call this thing _love_ , for lack of a better word.

So having established the target of our questioning, what are the options? What is it that makes us fall in love? In fact, what makes us love at all, for whatever reason? Why is someone who was beloved as a friend now loved as a lover? Why is there sometimes no actual dividing line? 

Is there some grand design that guides our steps towards _love_ , or is it simply whimsy?

Shh, don't tell me your answer yet. We're making a wager, after all. If the point is to see it through, then, of course, we must _see it through._ It's difficult to see yourself, though; the mirrors are too close and too bright. For the sake of objectivity, it cannot be you, and it cannot be me.

Therefore, for the sake of this wager, let's pick someone. Mm, but it can't be anyone too special -- the gods don't care too much for being the ones watched, after all. And it can't be anyone too ordinary, because people like that have only one small life, never mind two. We have to go for a middle ground.

Give a roll of the dice, my friends, and let's see what comes up.


	2. over hill and yonder

The stairs were worn smooth from years of flowing water, slippery to the point of treacherous. They wound downwards in a spiral that disappeared into sheer impenetrable darkness.

_Come._

From deep, deep below, there was a whispering rustle, and then the sound of things chittering and groaning to each other, their voices starting hushed and then rising. One voice laughed. Another sobbed. They shifted one to the other and back again -- one voice, two, five, ten, a thousand.

_Come._

And they came, rising up in a hoard, rushing past him in a shrieking jubilant rush. There was a brilliant violet-tinged flash in the eastern sky, and they were gone again, leaving a near-vacuum of silence in their wake.

Footsteps crunched on the thin rocky soil. "Oh, what have you done now?"

He turned and he smiled. His teeth were all evenly sized and mostly white. "Let's play a game, darling," he said. He held out his hand, fingers spread wide. "I've got quite the proposition for you."

+++

Later, Jack would say it was an accident.

For one thing, in all of his years, he'd only encountered thundersnow twice before, and both times had taken him completely by surprise, the low growling roar of thunder coming from out of nowhere, or the brilliant flash of lightning in a cloudbank coming a little too close for comfort. He'd even tried to make it once, stirring up a good and proper snowstorm along the pacific coast, but all he'd really succeeded was a blanket of snow that took months to fade. (So, really, it was still a success, just not the one that he'd been first looking for. Jack liked to take victories wherever he could find them.)

Today, though, there was something weird in the storm from the very beginning. He stood at the top of a pine tree, frowning at the whistle of the wind around him; she was a familiar voice in his ears, and one that he knew as well as his own, but under that there was something harsh and echoing, something that sent an uneasy thrill up his spine. It had already passed the point where he could stop or redirect it, but he lingered anyway, curiosity piqued.

The air smelled off somehow -- there was the clean cold scent of snow, of course, and the wilder edge that came with a good and proper storm, but something else was there too sour, too sharp, more like the ozone of a thunderstorm than shrieking winds and sideways snow. Though even that wasn't quite the right comparison; it tickled the back of his throat and made him want to cough, just out of range of being familiar.

He was so distracted by trying to track the source of the oddity that he almost didn't hear the howling that rose up under the wind's secondary voice, discordant and discontent. Something barreled into him with enough force to knock him from his perch, hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs for a moment, and he flailed before the wind caught him up again, bearing him to a safer perch.

Their shapes were indistinct at first, just places where the wind swirled the snow in tighter formations. After a few seconds, though, he could see them more clearly, and it was like some kind of curtain had been pulled away.

On the tree where he'd been a moment before, a creature coiled its long body, watching him with pure white eyes. It was vaguely serpentine in build, long and lean, but with a whole host of clawed feet, and two sets of batlike wings near the top and the bottom of its body. Its head was wolf-shaped, the ears pulled back in a permanent gesture of distaste. The whole of its body was covered in inky dark scales, closely set together and catching flecks of snow between them.

And it wasn't alone. Jack turned his head in a slow circle and saw that while he wasn't surrounded, there were at least four others, each waiting atop a tree, each staring straight at him with their strange unblinking eyes. He tightened his grip on the staff, listening to the wind's urgent song. She could lift him high, but with wings like that, those things could probably fly; she could drop them low, but then there was no more she would be able to do for him; if he tried to escape through the forest, there were too many trees for her to do more than pull him along.

"Okay," he muttered to himself. He kept one tightly gripping his staff, slowly slipping the other into his pocket, fingering the small globe tucked in there. "It's okay. Plan C."

It was only for emergencies, North had told him when he'd handed it over; it would only bring him to the ridge outside of Santoff Clausen and nowhere else. And while Jack knew he could survive a decent amount of physical punishment, he wasn't sure any amount of healing would be able to work if something took a bite out of you and swallowed.

None of the things had their mouths open, but he could picture pretty easily the sort of teeth they might have.

He turned to meet the gaze of the largest of the creatures, the one that had struck him in the first place. It never once blinked, just studying him as he shifted his weight; at least for now, it seemed content to just observe him, rather than gather itself for any sort of attack.

"That's right," Jack muttered, under his breath. "You just stay right there--"

He took a step back, off of the tree, trusting the wind to catch and slow his fall. _Now_ the things were moving: he saw them surge forward, as graceful as swirling shadows, and now he could see their mouths, and each was full of a host of jagged yellowed fangs.

Tooth would have a fit, he thought dimly, then twisted in midair, flinging the globe down before him, and the wind caught it and sped it along, so that even though it struck snow, it hit hard enough to shatter, and to his relief the portal opened, just as North had said it would. He could see the familiar shadowed shape of Santoff Claussen through it, and he was more than a little relieved; even if one followed him, one on one was a lot better than five on one--

As he fell, though, he heard a sudden booming crack of thunder, so loud that his ears ached. A moment later the world went completely, blindingly white, and he had a moment to think: _hey, isn't it supposed to be the other way around?_ before the wind cut off around him, abrupt as a tap going off, and he was falling for real.

He had enough time to force his body to relax, letting his body go limp, and then he struck the ground and the whole world went white.

+++

_Green eyes bored into him, cold as ice and accusatory. "What the hell did you do to my holiday, you feckless idiot?!"_

_He only shrugged and grinned, trying to hide the pounding of his heart. Even anger was a marvel to him; it meant he was being seen and acknowledged. Anger meant caring, and indifference was almost the same thing as death. He dredged up the rehearsed words and did his best to make them sound as casual as he could. "Oh, you know, just doing my duty to my favorite season. White's a good look, don't you think?"_

(my name is jack frost, the moon told me so; it is nice to meet you)

_"Oh, Jack, it's lovely!" Tooth beamed, clasping her hands, and Baby Tooth chirped agreement, daring in and out of the delicate ice house he'd carved for her. It would melt soon enough, but for the moment it held up quite well, all spires and arches. "You didn't have to do all of that ..."_

_"I wanted to," he said, and he meant it, because it was so nice to have someone *to* do things for, someone who would see his handiwork and appreciate it._

(my name is jack frost, the moon told me so)

_"You are extending arm too far," North said, with a smile in his voice. "See, it is more like this." And he took Jack's arm, guiding him through the motions of a forward parry. "If you go too far, you leave yourself open, and then belly is all exposed! No good, yes?"_

_"You make this look too easy," he complained, and North threw his head back and laughed. Jack managed to hold his scowl for a few more seconds before laughing himself, shaking his head at the petulance in his own voice._

(my name is jack frost)

_Sandy drew a picture of a cat in his sand, fluffy and fat, and then he touched its back, which seemed to be its cue to come to life. It sauntered forward to sniff curiously at Jack's frost bunny, which in turn just touched noses with the sand cat, unalarmed._

_"Okay, that's cute," he admitted, and Sandy grinned at him as the cat began to groom the rabbit, and even if there was no sound, Jack could imagine the sound of purring easily enough._

(my name is)

_once upon a time there was a ?? with no ???_

(my name)

+++

Jack woke to the sound of someone calling his name.

That wasn't too odd, really; sometimes it felt like his life was a series of people looking for him for whatever reason. A few seconds later, he even recognized the voice -- Bunny, sounding decently more panicked than Jack could recall in recent memory.

"'M up!" he managed, but his voice was muffled. He pushed himself up and found that he had been facedown in a snowbank, and then he had to stop to blink the stuff from his eyes. It would melt eventually, even on his skin, but it took longer than normal, and he had the worst sort of headache. "I'm over here, Bunny! Little help or something?"

He heard Bunny approach before he saw him, as a hard pounding of feet across the snow. He sat up just in time to be bowled over for the second time in what felt like a single day, and really, that was totally uncalled for! Still dazed and headachey, he fell back with a yelp, then choked with a large furry hand closed around his throat -- not hard enough to choke him, but definitely enough of a threat that he didn't dare actually try to sit up.

He looked up, wide-eyed and staring. Bunny had one of his boomerangs in his other hand, lifted up in threat, and even if it was just polished wood, Jack had been clipped by them enough times to know they were solid stuff. You couldn't really stab someone with them, but they'd make a pretty effective bludgeon, and that was something he was uncomfortably aware of that, lying pinned by Bunny's weight, and Bunny looking angrier than Jack had ever remembered seeing him -- not during the blizzard of '68, not even when Easter had been ruined by Pitch.

"Uh," he squeaked, his voice more hoarse than he would have liked. "Bunny--"

Those long fingers flexed around his throat. Bunny's eyes narrowed. His voice was hard and flat.

"Who the hell are you, and what have you done with Jack Frost?"

"... Uh." Jack blinked. "Bunny? I know I'm the one who hit my head, but ... are you okay?"

"I asked you a question." Bunny's eyes narrowed further and his nose twitched sharply, but his ears went from being flat against his skull to up and forward. That had to be something, right?

"I _am_ Jack Frost," Jack said, at the same time he heard Tooth's voice:

"Bunny! Is Jack all right?"

And a moment later she popped into view, up over Bunny's shoulder -- but when she saw Jack's face she pulled back for a moment, her eyes wide. He saw her jaw literally drop before she covered her mouth with a small squeak.

This was definitely starting to get weird. Jack shifted his weight a little, testing, and thankfully Bunny didn't tighten his grip -- though he didn't move his hand away, either.

"So, uh." He looked from first one of them to the other. "At this point, I should be asking 'what's wrong with my face' than 'is there something wrong,' huh?"

A low hiss whistled through Bunny's teeth, stopping only when Tooth put a hand on his shoulder. She smiled at Jack, though the worry was still plain to see in her eyes.

"Um, so, sorry about that," she said. "It's just -- we heard our friend calling for us, and when we got out here, it was ... you, instead."

"Me?" Jack blinked. "Tooth, it's _me_. Jack!"

A small frown appeared pursed her lips and creased between her brows, but instead of saying anything, she fluttered back, tugging Bunny with her. He resisted a moment, but then gave in, finally loosening the hold on Jack's throat. Jack scooted back a little and sat up, looking down at himself automatically as he did. Nothing looked out of place: he had his same hoodie, same worn pants, same pale hands and feet with knobby toes and long fingers. His staff lay nearby and he twisted to grab it, and though he didn't miss the way Bunny and Tooth both automatically tensed at that, he chose to ignore it, giving a small sigh of relief once it was back in his hands.

"Jack?" Tooth said, her voice soft.

He looked from her pale face to Bunny's scowl. The thought of summoning the wind and fleeing sounded good for about a split second, but he quickly dismissed it. "Yeah?"

She squeezed Bunny's shoulder for a moment, then flitted in closer. Jack leaned back automatically; that sort of movement was usually the precursor to her checking on his teeth, and while part of him thought that it'd be nice to deal with something familiar, the greater part of him was too much on edge from their reactions. To his vague relief, though, all she did was peer closely at him, studying his face with an intensity he'd never gotten from her before.

After a few long seconds, though, she gasped and pulled back, covering her mouth with her hands. Immediately Bunny was there behind her, and he looked less pleased than before, if something like that were even possible. Tooth shook her head, her eyes so wide they were almost perfectly round.

"Jack," she gasped. "It is you."

"Of course it is," he said, with exaggerated slowness now. "I said that."

"But--" She bobbed back a little, looking from him to Bunny -- who'd gone absolutely stonefaced now, unreadable-- "it's just that--"

"What's my name," Bunny said, and if his face was like stone so was his voice, rough edges grinding together.

Jack cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. "Bunny."

"My _name_."

"I just said--"

"Bunny," Tooth cut in quickly, putting a hand on his shoulder. He pulled back harder than seemed necessary, his eyes narrowed to slits of color before he turned away from Jack, looking to Tooth instead.

"I'm going to keep looking," he said.

Before either of them could answer, he took off, dashing off across the snow. Tooth watched him run for a moment, then took a deep breath and turned back to Jack. Even though she smiled, there was something strained about it, and her eyes kept darting from his face to his shoulders to his chest and back again, like she couldn't quite decide where to look.

"Um, sorry about that," she said. "You know how Bunny is ..."

"I know how he is," Jack agreed, frowning in the direction that Bunny had gone. "But I don't know what the hell all that was about."

"Oh. That? Haha, well, that's -- well, you see --" Tooth clasped her hands for a moment, wringing them nervously. Just before Jack could prompt her, though, she burst out:

"Jack, since when were you a boy?!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME:
>
>> "Sorry," she said, not quite wringing her hands. "I'm sure this is just as strange for you as it is for us, but -- don't blame him too much, all right? He's just taking it a bit hard--"
>> 
>> "No, really?" Jack looked past her, straight at Bunny's back. He pitched his voice deliberately loud, taking a swaggering step forward. If it was a fight Bunny was spoiling for, well, Jack didn't mind providing. "I couldn't tell, you know, what with him being a _total ass_ or anything."


	3. underneath

In the end, Sandy was the one to save the day -- or, at least, Jack's own hide, which he would take as good enough.

He showed up just as Jack finished gaping at Tooth's question, and he'd taken one look between the two of them before his small round face puffed into the fiercest scowl Jack had ever seen and he drifted forward and caught Jack's wrist, pulling him back for space. A jumble of images began to form over his head, flicking in a sequence too fast to be read. His arrival distracted Tooth, though, so Jack had a few precious seconds to try and puzzle out if he'd even heard that question right at all. What had she meant, _since when_? He'd always been one; she knew that! He'd always been comfortable in his own skin, and while he could appreciate a cute girl's smile, the flip of a skirt or the line of a leg, and while he'd watched the lines blur over the years, he'd always been quite settled right where he was, firmly male, firmly _Jack Frost._

Tooth was arguing with Sandy -- how _she_ could tell what he was trying to say, Jack couldn't tell. "But maybe it was Pitch--"

A large X.

"You never know! It's been a few years, he could always be--"

Another X, a pair of dice, a glowing-eyed snake, and a lightning bolt. Jack straightened a little at that last one, tugging at his wrist in Sandy's grip.

"There was thundersnow," he said. "Right before I landed here, I got caught in a storm, and--"

He stopped automatically, looking around at the brief prickling at the back of his neck. All around him was a pristine white landscape, broken up only by Bunny's footprints, leading to and away from his resting place. There were no trees here, and no place for any strange creatures to hide, but he couldn't help the brief chill, and it had nothing to do with the cold.

"And what?" Tooth asked softly.

He shook his head to clear it and shrugged. "I ran into some stuff," he said, turning his head to glance sidelong at them both. "Uh, they didn't really look anything like the Nightmares Pitch had. They were kind of like -- snakes? With wolf heads? Like--" He stood, a bit wobbly, and thrust the tip of his staff into the snow. He wasn't really that skilled of an artist, other than with his frost, but he attempted to draw a facsimile of the things that had attacked him in the first place. Sandy remained floating close, watching with a frown, and Tooth herself fluttered to take a look.

"Like this," he said, when he was done. The wings were lopsided and the legs looked more like spokes coming off the long body, but it was close enough. "It was like they just appeared out of nowhere. I tried to get away, they swarmed me, I used one of North's globes, and then ..." He shrugged, tucking his staff close to his body again. "Here I am."

"I've never seen anything like that before," Tooth said, but Sandy was frowning at Jack's picture, floating to examine it from various angles; after a moment he looked up at Jack, and in the glowing sands over his head, a semi-familiar shape appeared: sleekly serpentine, jaws open and wings spread. Jack recoiled a little automatically, and Tooth gave a startled gasp, covering her mouth.

"Th'hell's all this?" Bunny's voice cut in, still gruff stone. If anything, he looked stiffer than before, like he was on the verge of freezing solid. His eyes were still narrow and probing, switching from Jack's face to the thing over Sandy's head, and then he let out a low hissing growl. "That's--"

Sandy nodded, his expression grim.

"But they were all--"

A headshake.

Bunny growled again, rubbing his face with a hand. Tooth fluttered towards him and paused, looking from him to Sandy to Jack, then back again.

"Bunny?"

"Let's get inside," he growled. "Might as well tell it once, if it's got to be told at all." He shot a withering look at Jack, then turned as sharply as he could in the snow, towards Santoff Clausen. "You too, Frostbite."

He strode off without looking back. Tooth looked at Jack and at Sandy, then gave a small helpless shrug, darting off after him. Jack himself looked at Sandy, who seemed to finally register his confusion, and patted his hand. He managed a smile that was only really a ghost of his normal pleasant expression, but at that point, Jack was willing to take even that small thing. Even a small victory was worth something.

"All will be explained, huh?" he asked, as he began to walk. Sandy floated alongside him, almost -- but not quite -- hovering. "He's got all the answers in the world in that furry skull of his?"

Sandy shrugged and Jack fell silent. They headed into Santoff Claussen, following Bunny up the winding stairs to the globe room. Bunny snagged one of the yeti that passed by, speaking to it briefly before stalking to the globe itself, staring up at it. His back was ramrod straight, his ears laid back again, and the tension seemed to radiate from him in waves. Tooth murmured something to him briefly, then came back towards Jack, a slightly strained smile in place again.

"Sorry," she said, not quite wringing her hands. "I'm sure this is just as strange for you as it is for us, but -- don't blame him too much, all right? He's just taking it a bit hard--"

"No, really?" Jack looked past her, straight at Bunny's back. He pitched his voice deliberately loud, taking a swaggering step forward. If it was a fight Bunny was spoiling for, well, Jack didn't mind providing. "I couldn't tell, you know, what with him being a _total ass_ or anything."

"Jack," Tooth protested, and her own voice was a bit sharper than normal, but Jack ignored her, watching the way Bunny's ears swiveled further back. There was no way he hadn't been heard, and like clockwork he could count down the seconds before he got a reaction: three ... two ...

"You listen here," Bunny hissed, before he spun around to face Jack, his eyes flashing in his anger. "You can talk all you want, but you have _no idea_ what you're tangling with, here, and meanwhile, my--"

He cut himself off abruptly, drawing up to his full height. Jack slunk closer though, meeting Bunny's glare with one of his own.

"Your what? Is it something all about just you, now? After everything you've always gone off on me about, that's pretty rich! Suddenly Bunny's got a stake in things, so we have to be nice to him? Bunny's having a hard day, so it's all right to let him be a complete ass--"

"Jack!" Tooth snapped, but a moment later North appeared, wiping off his hands and his expression welcoming at first -- and then, again, when he saw Jack's face, he came to a stop, his eyes going wide and his jaw actually dropping. It was starting to get old. Jack met his surprised look with a scowl, then turned again to glare at Bunny's back. His momentum was lost, but his bad mood lingered.

After nearly a minute of uncomfortable silence, North cleared his throat. "So, then. What is fussing all about?"

"I have no idea," Jack said, at the same time Bunny turned away from the globe and said, "Isn't it bloody obvious?" and they both stopped to glare at one another. Tooth slipped between them a moment later, pushing them apart with irresistible strength. Jack saw even Bunny strain against it for a moment before he pulled away properly, falling into a nervous pacing pattern.

"Seems like our _guest_ is here because of some sort of ruddy mixup." Bunny's voice was less stone and more fire now, still harsh. "A perfect 'accident' and someone pulling the strings."

" _Now_ he gives me the benefit of the doubt," Jack muttered. Tooth shot him a look and he subsided; if Bunny had heard his aside, he gave no indication of it as he went on:

"Back at the beginning, things were a hair different than they were now. People believed in everything, and there were a lot more folks like us than there are now. Enough that things could get a mite crowded now and then." He paused, a hand going to his shoulder and resting there, as if in memory of some old injury. "But there are some things that happen whether or not you _believe_ in 'em. Some things don't need human belief just to exist."

"Bunny, you are not speaking clearly," North said, his voice a low rumble. "Say what you think it is, and then what you think we must do."

Bunny took a deep breath, his nostrils flaring. He spun tightly on his heel to face Jack again, stalking straight up to him. Jack tensed at once, gripping his staff tighter; in an actual knockdown fight, he didn't doubt Bunny had the advantage, but he wasn't afraid to cheat if he had to.

"Chance is playing games again," he said. "And where Chance goes, Chaos follows."

Sandy nodded, his round little face solemn. North looked blank for a moment, then scratched his head.

"Is it so bad?" he asked. "Chance is powerful thing. Is way that you may test yourself and come out stronger."

Bunny shook his head. He began to pace once more, his ears pressed back against his skull, his hackles up. "It's deeper than that. What you know's a watered down version of the real thing. Real chaos, mate, that's the stuff between the stars. The dark that goes deeper than any of us reach. You don't want to go there."

"But you have." It was Tooth's voice, soft and just above hushed. "Haven't you?"

Bunny turned his head towards her. If he wound himself any tighter, Jack thought, it looked like he might simply explode. For long, long seconds he said nothing -- and then he shrugged once, sharply and turned to the side.

"Once," he said. "A long time ago."

Then he sagged in place, looking tired and haggard; it reminded Jack sharply of that one Easter years ago. "So whatever the hell is going on, it's dabbling with stuff bigger than we're really supposed to handle. And Jack's the one in the middle of it."

Tooth moved to his side, putting a hand on his shoulder, but Sandy remained beside Jack. He could feel Sandy looking at him -- not without care, but still with curiosity, and it made the space between his shoulderblades itch, unreachable. He gripped his staff tighter, until his knuckles began to ache.

"All right," he said after long seconds of silence. "I get it. I'm in trouble again. But here's the thing: I have no idea what I did."

Bunny's ears twitched, then lifted a moment before he looked Jack's way again. Jack scowled back as fiercely as he could, and this time he was surprised to see Bunny flinch a little before straightening, running a hand over his face.

"It wasn't anything you did, mate," he said. There was a note of apology in his voice. "Probably you were just unlucky."

"Unlucky. Right." Jack's voice took on a hard edge. "Story of my life."

"Jack ..." Tooth leaned towards him, though she didn't quite leave Bunny's side. "It's not--"

He didn't say anything, but took a step back, and another, and another -- and then ran into the solid wall that was North. Before he could break away and continue his escape, both of North's hands came down on his shoulders, holding him firmly in place.

"Come," North said, as he once had long ago. "Let us talk."

+++

They went to North's office again, and even if it was familiar to the point of predictable, Jack couldn't help but relax a little once the door closed behind them. He'd always liked North's office best out of the entire workshop; while most of the toys the yeti built came from North's blueprints and with North's input, everything _here_ was made directly by the man himself, and it showed. When North didn't say anything immediately, Jack drifted to his desk, examining the latest ice sculpture -- it appeared to be a scale model of the Tooth Palace, unfinished but still recognizable.

"Jack," North said, and it was almost a sigh. "Is very strange situation, is it not?"

"You're telling me." He kept his voice clipped, and North sighed again.

"I do not understand all things about it," North said, and Jack heard him move forward, a moment before a hand settled on his back again. "But Bunny is much older, and has seen many different things. If he says it is dangerous thing, then I believe him."

Jack glanced up at him sidelong. To his relief, North's face was the same as he'd always known it, warm and affectionate -- there was none of Bunny's weird anger or Tooth's anxiety or the strange weight of Sandy's unblinking stare. It was enough to pull a small smile out of him, just short of actual relief. "Yeah, well ... have you ever thought that maybe he's just overly paranoid?"

"Hah! Sometimes, yes." North shook his head, but didn't bother trying to hide his smile. "Bunny is always, as you say, a little bit paranoid. Is his instincts! Millennia do not change what is inside of you."

Jack looked down at the delicate ice sculpture in front of him again. "Millennia, huh?"

"As I say before," North said. "Bunny is older."

He made a noncommittal noise, nudging at an uncarved corner of the ice block, letting little tendrils of frost curl over the smooth surface. "Tooth said something, too."

"Did she?"

"Something about ... uh, well -- something about me being ... being a ..."

North was quiet for a moment. Then he sighed and squeezed Jack's shoulder hard. It almost hurt, but Jack couldn't help but lean into it all the same.

"You are still Jack Frost," North said. "I feel it in my belly. But ... you are not the _same_ Jack Frost that we know."

There was something lodged in Jack's throat; he had to struggle to get the words out. "And that Jack is ... ?"

North tugged at him gently, leading him around the desk. Jack resisted for about a second, then followed, nearly tripping over his own feet. On the other side of the ice sculpture, half-hidden by a pile of papers, was a delicate picture frame. North picked it up wordlessly and held it out to Jack, who hesitated for a long, long minute before he took it.

It was a photo -- he remembered when it had been taken, shortly after Pitch's defeat, at Tooth's insistence. "For the memories!" she'd said, and had physically dragged Bunny in close when he'd tried to sneak away. They'd gotten Phil to take it with an old-fashioned tripod camera, the five of them grouped together -- North and Bunny in the back, Jack and Tooth in front of them, and Sandy in the front, his small arms held out as if in welcome. It had taken several tries because first Bunny had refused to smile, and then Jack had gotten bored and started zapping those ridiculous rabbit feet with ice, and ...

And ...

He stared at the photo blankly. It looked almost exactly the same as the version he had, kept safe in his pocket, but there were a few notable differences.

For one, Bunny was smiling -- openly, fondly -- but he wasn't looking at the camera, he was looking at ...

There was a high ringing noise in Jack's ears. No way. No _way_.

She had his blue eyes, that was for sure: the clear bright blue of a cloudless winter morning, and she had the same smile, one corner of her mouth curling up, ready to be sweet or sly at a moment's notice. She had the same dark brows and worn blue hoodie; she had the same shepherd's staff, the worn wood permanently frosted where her fingers curled around it.

Her hair was pure white as well, almost transparent at the tips, but it was softer, longer, framing her face in a soft tumble. He could see more of it gathered at the base of her skull in a braided bun, though wisps of it had pulled free, so that she looked less like _librarian_ and more tousled. And under the hoodie, there was the unmistakable gentle outward curve of breasts. They weren't big, but they were _there_ , they were impossible to deny or ignore and ...

Bunny was looking at her. Bunny was looking at her and smiling and she was leaning into him just that tiny bit -- like Jack had done when they'd took the photo, just to make Bunny annoyed, only in this photo, it looked like he was enjoying it.

Jack took another deep breath and let it out slowly. He looked up at North.

"That's your Jack Frost," he said.

North nodded. His expression was gently sympathetic, and really, it was a good thing he'd kept a hand on Jack's shoulder, because when his knees buckled, that was one of the few things that helped keep him upright.

"Oh god," he said, and his voice was higher than normal, just teetering on the verge of hysteria. "And she -- she and Bunny--?!"

"For several years now," North agreed. "Not too long after-- Jack, Jack, what is wrong?"

Jack shoved back, thrusting the photo back into North's fumbling hands. He turned sharply and marched straight for the door, unlocked it with determination, and from there strode into the hallway. Without stopping, he marched down the winding stairs, past the globe room (he heard Tooth call his name, and maybe at another time he would have felt guilty for the worry in her voice) and for the doors of Santoff Claussen. He didn't bother with his hands for it, just kicked at them until they opened, stepping out into the frigid air.

"And where d'you think you're going, mate?"

"Somewhere," he said, without turning around. "I don't know yet."

He heard the soft click of claws against the floor, and the weight of someone's presence up right behind him, close enough to touch but not quite connecting. Automatically he tried to hunch away from it, feeling a weird, almost sick flipflop of fascination in the pit of his stomach. If it had been the other him -- the girl with almost his face in that photo -- would she have turned? Would she smile at Bunny and call him by name--

(when had she learned his name?)

\--and let him distract her from her bad mood?

Jack shook his head fiercely to clear it. Bunny hadn't said anything to that anyway -- why would he? In the end, even though he was Jack Frost, he wasn't the _right one._

He took another step forward, tipping his head back so that the wind could caress his face. It was the same as always, and he was more relieved by that than he really wanted to admit.

"I wouldn't," Bunny said in a low voice.

Jack gritted his teeth. He turned finally and was proud of himself for not starting at just _how_ close Bunny was; just moving had them brushing together in passing. Bunny's face was stern as always, but there was none of the fond tolerance that Jack had learned to read. It was almost like being in North's workshop for the first time again, glaring Bunny down over stupid pride; it was like looking into a mirror and finding yourself wanting.

How weird was it, to know that even compared to yourself, you didn't measure up?

"No? Well, I _would_ ," he hissed, rapping the crook of his staff sharply against Bunny's chest. "Maybe I don't really want to stick around and listen to some jerk tell me what I can and can't do. _Maybe_ I don't like being mistaken for someone else and being blamed for it. What do you think of that, kangaroo?"

Bunny's eyes narrowed. "Jack--"

Jack took several steps back, still holding his staff out at ready, just in case. "No," he said. "I'm done. I'm going. If you get your head out of your ass and everything? That'd be awesome. Until then, though, I'm out."

"This isn't the time for one of your little tantrums-- oi! Jack! Get back here!"

The rest of Bunny's shouts were drowned out by the sharp whistling of the wind, and Jack twisted in midair, willing it to carry him higher and faster, until Santoff Clausen was nothing more than a dark smudge on the horizon.

He glanced back once, and then no more.

+++

"That could have gone better," Tooth said quietly.

Bunny shrugged once, a hard upwards gesture of both shoulders. "We should go after him," he muttered. "After everything I said, you'd think that idiot would actually listen--"

"Bunny," she said, and he stopped immediately. She moved towards him, resting a hand on his arm; even with that light touch, she could feel the tension in him, knotting him up until he was nearly vibrating with it. "Give him a little time."

"There's no _time_ for time," he snapped, but it was halfhearted, and they both knew it. When Tooth pulled at his arm, he let her draw him away from the door, down the hallway and back to the globe room. A couple of elves scurried in the opposite direction, and a moment later there was a solid bang as the door swung shut.

North was waiting for them, his arms crossed and his expression anxious. It fell further when he saw it was just the two of them, and he exchanged a quick look with Sandy that spoke volumes for its brevity.

"Bunny," he said, "I am sorry."

"For what?" He shook his arm a little, but Tooth refused to be brushed off, still keeping a firm grip on his arm.

"I showed him picture--"

"He already sort of knew," Tooth volunteered, not quite nervous. "I, um, kind of let it out."

"I also told him." North had never quite looked so apologetic. "Or, rather, he guessed and I did not tell him no."

At that, Bunny tensed, for a moment grinding his teeth together. "You," he began with a hiss, then just deflated, rubbing at his face with both hands. "Strewth, what a mess this is."

A small hand brushed against his fingers. He glanced through them and saw Sandy's worried face hovering close to his own. Once their eyes met, Sandy pulled back, forming a golden snowflake over his head, punctuated by a question mark.

Should I go look?

Bunny glanced at Tooth briefly, and when she didn't protest, he nodded. "Please."

Sandy saluted, then headed past Bunny and was gone. A few long beats of awkward silence stretched out, and then Bunny sighed, looking to North again. "So he guessed, huh?"

"Well." North spread his hands a little, still contrite. "You are not quite subtle, my friend."

"I'm plenty subtle," he grumbled, then sighed. "No wonder he took off like that. On top of everything ..."

"Once he calms down, I'm sure he'll understand," Tooth said, her voice pitched soothing and low. Her hand on his arm began to rub in gentle circles, and it relaxed him almost in spite of himself. "I mean, that's still Jack, right? So if you give him a little bit of time, I'm sure he'll come around."

"I don't think he's got the time for it, Tooth." He glanced at her, then towards the globe, studying the myriad of scattered lights. "Maybe it's not belief itself that's a problem this time, but if those things start spreading -- if he saw what I think he saw -- we're going to need to take them down fast."

"What _are_ they, though? I mean, you said--" She waved a hand helplessly, as if it could gather up his words again. "You said 'the darkness between the stars,' but ..."

"Just like that," he said. "It's more complicated than that, but ..." Bunny tapped the ground with a toe, and a single unpainted egg popped out by his feet, stretching onto his toes. He bent and picked it up, holding it out so that she could see it. "Think about the universe as this egg, yeah? And everything's contained within -- all our stars and planets, all the worlds and peoples wrapped up in a nice little shell." He tapped at it lightly with one claw.

"Now, imagine that there are things outside of it, that'd want to get in." He beckoned to one of her mini-fairies, who zipped over and chirped at him curiously.

"If you wanted to get into this," he said to the little fairy, "what would you do?"

The fairy considered for a moment, then darted to settle her tiny weight on his hand. First she knocked on the shell with a fist, then tapped at it with her beak. After doing that, she pulled back and looked up at his face, trilling a few curious notes.

"Right," he said. "Only not all of the things that want in are so polite. They just want in, so they can eat everything that's in there. If you let them go, they'll devour everything they can, and you're just left with something hollow. Just the shell, if we want to continue the metaphor."

As the fairy pushed off his hand and returned to her queen mother's side, Tooth reached out, brushing her fingertips lightly against the egg.

"When did you see something like that?" she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.

"Ages ago." He cupped the egg in his hands, staring at it without really seeing it. "Once upon a time, there were things far greater than this little old planet we're living on now. There were a whole string of 'em -- a whole kingdom of worlds. You should've seen it." His voice turned wistful. "It might've been the greatest thing that this universe ever produced."

"What happened?"

Bunny tapped sharply on the eggshell with his thumb claw. It cracked and Tooth flinched back, covering her mouth with her hands.

"Something got in," he said. "And even though they were contained, they found themselves a host, and then ..." He shrugged. "New beginnings have to come from somewhere. Sometimes, it's from the end of something else."

Tooth said nothing, but North cleared his throat gently, sliding himself back into the conversation. He took the cracked egg from Bunny, passing it off to an elf, who skittered off with its burden.

"In case like this, then perhaps we should be making plan," he said. "Sandy will find Jack. But what happens when he is found? We must be ready for this."

"Ready. Right." Bunny rubbed his face again and took another deep breath. Worry still twisted low in his stomach and buzzed along his nerves; somewhere in the back of his mind he could feel the stirrings of panic: Jack was out there all alone; Jack was a stranger in a falsely familiar world; Jack was--

Tooth's hand curled around one of his shoulders, while North's settled on his other. He started at that, jerked out of his thoughts; looking between their concerned faces, there was no way to bluff his way out of the situation. There was nothing else to do but as North had suggested.

"Plans," he said. "Right. Let's do this."

+++

Jack's first thought was _Burgess,_ because Burgess meant _home_ and it meant _Jamie_ , whose steadfast belief had remained strong even as the years slipped by. He was halfway there before he thought about it, and the realization nearly toppled him from the sky -- that Jamie might not even see _him_ , because he was used to _her_.

Luckily he caught himself before he actually fell, but he changed direction at once, veering away from Burgess. Instead, he shot further westward, over flat farmlands and the sharp spires of mountains, going until he could smell the ocean, sharp and salty. From there he angled himself northwards again, going until all he could see spreading beneath him was the soft muffling white of snow. The nearest human town wasn't even visible when he finally touched down, sinking knee-deep into snow.

For a long, long time, he just stood there, breathing deep and hard, inhaling and inhaling until his lungs ached. He was tempted to just start yelling -- he'd done it a few times before, just to hear the sound of _someone's_ voice coming back to him -- but even as he drew himself up to try, the desire fizzled out, leaving him feeling oddly adrift.

He drew a foot back and kicked at the snow, watching it flutter up and drift down again. Up above, in the cloudless sky, the moon was three-quarters full and glowing pale white.

No answers there. Big surprise.

Jack kicked at the snow again, then began to walk. His feet made gentle crunching noises against the layers of snow, but he left only the faintest of footsteps in his wake. Someone looking might easily mistake them for the tracks of a passing animal. The thought irritated him when it rose up in his mind, and he began to deliberately dig his toes in, taking each step with exaggerated force so that there would be _some_ real mark of his passing.

The quiet helped, though. Without the weight of Tooth's curious stare, or North's near-pity, or Bunny's ... whatever it could be called ... he feel at least some of his tension bleeding away. Even if this wasn't really "his" world, it _felt_ familiar. Ice and snow and the wind -- those had been his from the beginning, and it all still responded to him when he called for it; he wasn't sure what he would have done if the wind hadn't come when he'd called. Whatever the girl-him was like, he couldn't help but be a little grateful for this last similarity.

But was that really a last similarity? What was she even like, this girl Jack Frost? Did she like throwing snowballs to break up a tense situation, or did she flutter her lashes and ice someone's feet while they were distracted? Was she even friends with Jamie at all? Had there been a confrontation with Pitch in Antarctica -- had there been anything more to that?

Maybe not, if she was together with Bunny ... and how weird was _that_ , that there would be a girl version of him somewhere that could actually get along with the stupid rabbit long enough to -- to --

Jack stopped abruptly and smacked at his face with his free hand. That train of thought was just a little too strange. Sure, he _liked_ Bunny (though he would be sure to never admit that aloud, not without undue pressure) -- they'd settled into a comfortable sort of rivalry in the years since Jack had become a guardian, and he would guess that Bunny was his best friend, along with Jamie. And he was grateful for that -- even a single friend was precious, and sometimes having _as many_ as he now did felt like an embarrassment of riches.

Something sour rose in the back of his throat and he swallowed hard a few times to push it back down. It was too familiar for him to not recognize, either: envy and disappointment, swirled together in a bitter cocktail. He'd felt that way when his hard work was credited to someone else, or when all his best efforts were quickly forgotten for the next shiny thing. Over the years, he'd grown used to it, and even as a Guardian it hadn't been banished forever, but ...

No, no, no. Jack smacked his face again. He was not going to make himself jealous over something he didn't really want! Though Bunny was a jerk even on his best days, and really, he had no idea what his other self even saw in that pompous, smug, anal retentive, hotheaded, ridiculous--

Jack growled and ducked down, digging both hands into the snow now and tossing a whole handful of it up into the air. As it fluttered down, soft and powdery, he spun his staff and slashed through it, turning the flakes into shards of ice. It wasn't much, but the sound they made as they hit the ground was at least more satisfying than silence. His skin itched with a restlessness he didn't want to think too deeply on, and at the back of his mind something whispered at him to run, _run_ , to keep going until even the wind was exhausted and dropped him to fall wherever he would land ...

It was on the tip of his tongue to call the wind and give in to that impulse, but before he could do anything, a flicker of gold at the corner of his vision caught his attention. He turned towards it before he remembered he wanted to be alone, and then it was too late, because Sandy saw him looking back, and was descending with rapid grace in his little sand biplane. Once it was low enough, it shifted back to a general cloud, then dissipated, swirling around Sandy's body and fading seamlessly into his clothes. His feet did not quite touch the snow as he looked up at Jack, a question mark forming over his head.

Jack shrugged and kept his shoulders up, too-casual. "Oh, you know. Just needed some air."

The question mark faded, but Sandy raised an eyebrow instead, crossing his arms over his chest. His expression spoke volumes, and Jack liked to think he'd gotten pretty good at reading Sandy over the years. It was a matter of just not trying too hard -- too much focus and the words slipped away, just like most dreams. _Did you need so much air you had to run all the way here?_

He shrugged again, taking a small sliding step back. "Yeah, well, with a welcome like that, who'd want to stick around? Can you really blame a guy?"

A twisting serpentine body formed in the swirling golden sands: a thing with a wolf's head and too many legs and stretching wings. Sandy didn't look terribly impressed. He tapped one foot silently, just barely above the snow. _It's dangerous to go too far right now. Did you think we wouldn't care?_

Jack's mouth twisted. He turned his head, though he glanced back at Sandy's face as he did, not quite able to help himself. "Well, after that reception ..."

Sandy's frown deepened. He drifted closer to Jack, almost close enough to touch now. Over his head, the sand flickered and formed five familiar shapes -- and as four of them drew close to the fifth, it pulled away. _There was a reason for that._

"Hey, that's not how it happened," he protested. "Did you forget the part where Bunny was pissed by me just existing? Because I ended up here by accident somehow? Or Tooth and North acting like I'm some kind of stranger even though I was _right there_ \--"

Sandy floated up to be eye-level with Jack, then reached out to smack him upside the head. It wasn't hard -- it felt more like a tap than anything else -- but it cut off his building rant and left him a little sullen and staring. For his part, Sandy crossed his arms and huffed silently. Over his head, the sands shifted and swirled, so that the four figures of the other Guardians surrounded his representative snowflake and drew it in closer. Jack pursed his lips and glanced aside.

"I'm not a kid," he muttered, then sighed and let his shoulders droop. "All right, fine. We'll go back."

Sandy smiled at that, bright enough that Jack almost felt guilty. He still felt awkward and unpleasantly out of place -- and how much had he _not_ missed feeling that way? -- but at least Sandy wasn't treating him differently now. And that was what he'd wanted, right? This might not be his world, but everyone else was familiar to him, even if it wasn't the way around; he didn't want to be treated like an outsider again.

Then Sandy reached out and grabbed at Jack's sleeve, tugging, drifting backwards so that Jack was forced to move with him, step by step, and he smiled so encouragingly that Jack felt the corners of his own mouth twitch a little in response.

"You're such a cheater," he said. When Sandy cocked his head and formed another question mark, he said, "I was really mad, all right? I was going to come back eventually--"

Sandy gave him a raised-eyebrow look.

"--I was, seriously! Just. Not right away." He shrugged a little, adjusting the weight of his staff against his shoulder. "I did want some time to think."

There was a pause. Sandy drifted closer again, patting Jack's hand with one of his own. His soundless voice was almost loud enough for real words for just that moment. _I know. But they're worried._

"Maybe," he muttered, and before Sandy could scold him again, he took a deep breath to summon the wind -- then stopped.

Something smelled off.

It was just a little thing -- a hint of sharpness and sourness when there should have just been clean pure snow, and it was just barely familiar. It was the way that the thundersnow had smelled, before he'd fallen through that messed-up portal. He tensed, gripping his staff in both hands and looking around. Sandy lifted up a little, looking around himself.

All around them there was just the stretching white landscape. Jack's footprints were the only thing that broke up the expanse, but even so, he couldn't shake the intense feeling of being _watched_. His heartbeat was loud in his ears, the anxiety of anticipation itchy on his skin. It was _somewhere_ , he was sure of it, but _where_?

Then Sandy grabbed his arm and tugged, pulling him up with surprising strength. Jack yelped as his feet left the earth, caught by thick coils of gold sand, and the two of them shot up a moment before something exploded out of the snow from under him. He saw open jaws full of multiple rows of serrated yellow teeth, and he felt the pressure of something closing just short of his heel, before he jerked it out of the way. In response to his near-panic, the wind started up at a wailing shriek, catching both him and Sandy up and lifting them higher.

The creature hung suspended in the air for a long, long few seconds, and Jack was afraid it would just fly after them -- those wings couldn't just be for show -- but then it fell back to earth, writhing and twisting as it did, its long thick tail snapping like a whip. It hit the ground hard enough to send piles of snow flying, then gathered itself up again, its narrow eyes tracking their movements.

"What if they follow us?" he shouted over the wind to Sandy. "There's too many people between us and the Pole!"

Sandy curled his fingers harder into Jack's sleeve and set his face in a scowl. He gathered himself as if preparing for a jump, and then they shot up -- and up, and up, until the wind was forced to let go and the air was so thin and cold that Jack found himself actually having trouble catching his breath. Up this high, the stars seemed so close they could maybe even be touched. Jack stared, for a moment distracted, and then suddenly they were hurtling forward, and he had to grab onto Sandy with both hands and hold on with all his strength. They were going so fast that his eyes stung, and after a moment he had to duck his head, listening to the howl of displaced air in his ears, unable to do anything but cling to Sandy and to his staff and hope that he didn't lose his grip on either.

And yet ... he could still smell a trace of _something_ in the air, sharp and strange and inexplicably wrong, and that made him curl his fingers tighter against Sandy, because no matter how fast they were going -- so fast he was breathless from it -- that thing was _still following them._ He actually felt its teeth graze at his ankle before they were spiralling down, down and down and _down_ that he swore he actually heard a booming noise--

\--and then they were slamming into something tall and solid that still gave way when they hit, and they were tumbling together in a whole confused mass of limbs and parts, rolling and rolling until they hit a wall.

Jack lifted his head slowly, shaking it gingerly to try and clear it of the ringing. It took him a moment to realize they were inside of Santoff Claussen again -- everything had gone completely still and quiet for the moment, all eyes turned towards them.

He was sprawled half on top of Sandy, and they were both in turn on top of Bunny, the three of them in a pile against the wall. He pushed himself up and winced at the sudden pain in his foot, and when he turned to look, he recoiled a little at the mess they'd left in their wake. The intricate tapestries on the walls, the wood itself -- the tile floors -- had all been torn and gouged, and there was the debris of clockwork mechanisms and plastic bits and pieces of paperwork fluttering around.

And, he realized a moment later, one of the things itself was there, sprawling across the floor. One of North's swords was buried in its neck, so that its head hung half-severed from its serpentine body, and there were two long iridescent feathers sticking out of the thing's eyes. North himself was crouched by the creature, half over it, staring into its face, and Tooth was fluttering towards them, her hands outstretched.

"I can explain," he said in a small voice. Then he shook his head. "No I can't."

"Never mind that," Tooth said, just short of sharp. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine--" He shifted, then glanced down at his leg. Though it hadn't hurt quite as badly while they'd been fleeing, he could see now that it was ripped to rather neat shreds, halfway up to his knee. And it was bleeding quite a lot.

"Oh," he muttered. "Or not."

She made a distressed noise, pulling up short of actually touching him. "Wait here," she said, and darted off. Jack eased himself off of Bunny and Sandy both as carefully as he could, hissing as his numbed limbs woke up enough to protest the pain.

A small hand patted his arm; he turned and saw Sandy looking at him, bleary and apologetic. Jack managed a small smile, keeping it from being a grimace of pain by sheer force of will.

"S'arright," he said. "Just a bit of a scrape."

"If that's 'just a bit of a scrape,' I'd hate to think what you'd call being banged up right proper," Bunny said. His voice was dry and his eyes were open, but he didn't move from where he lay.

"Bunny!" He couldn't help the relief in his voice. "Sorry about that--"

"You're not sorry at all," Bunny groaned. He sat up slowly, one hand against his head, ears pressing back, then going forward again, as if to test the range of their motion. "You all right, Jack? Sandy?"

"I'm fine," Jack said, as Sandy gave Bunny a thumb's up, then turned a stern frown on Jack. "What, I am, I'll be all right in a bit--"

"Not if you don't hold still," Tooth said. Her voice was crisp, and her hands were fast and businesslike, grabbing Jack's leg and pulling it out straight. He looked at her and saw that a few of her fairies were lugging a gently-steaming bowl between them, and if he could, he would have recoiled.

"Tooth, I don't think--"

"It has to be cleaned," she said. "I know hot water isn't the best thing for you, but I'll be quick. Hold still."

He scooted back a little, tugging at his leg, and his shoulders bumped into the wall of Bunny's chest. He glanced back and up, meeting Bunny's unblinking stare.

"It's not as bad as it looks," he said weakly.

"Yeah?" Bunny raised an eyebrow. "Well, seeing as it looks pretty awful, that's a pretty wide range there." He put his hands on Jack's shoulders, and Jack found himself effectively trapped. "Best to just let her take a look at it. You know how she can get."

He almost snapped back something along the lines of _no, I don't, she's not the Tooth I know,_ but that would have been a lie. Tooth's obsession with hygiene usually drew the line at teeth, but he'd seen her send fairies after North with enough bandages to mummify him when a workshop mishap had left a long gash up his arm, and he himself had been on the receiving end of her attention before, though never for anything like this. Any of her earlier hesitation around him seemed to have vanished as she gently swiped a warm damp rag over his torn foot, and he had to admit, under the physical pain, it felt sort of nice. He curled his fingers and let her finish without protest, wincing only a little as she wrapped his foot up.

Just as she was tying it off, there was a meaty thunk from behind her. They looked and watched as North lifted the now-completely severed head of the creature up, plucking the feathers from its eyes. He studied its face for a moment, then looked at his four fellows.

"So," he said, and held it up higher and away from himself as black blood dripped into smoking puddles on the floor, "what shall we do now?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME:
>
>> North leaned in past her to examine the tree. He whistled low through his teeth, and unlike Jack, he did reach to touch the gouge marks, running a finger lightly over the ridges and scarring left behind. "It must have claws like a dragon for this," he said, but there was a light in his eyes, bright as always. "Perhaps a hide to match."
>> 
>> Tooth tsked. "You're too happy about that," she said, though she sounded more tolerant than annoyed. "If it does have a dragon's hide, then what will you do?"
>> 
>> "I will fight it!" he said, as happy as a kid on Christmas morning. "Has been long time since good fight. Even Pitch's Nightmares are not so tough, when there is even footing."
>> 
>> "We're supposed to be here on business, North!"


	4. she goes to make war

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am absolute balls at replying to comments or anything. But thank you everyone who's ready this, for being patient with me. '-'b

"You're always so dramatic in your scenarios, darling." Long fingers shuffled neatly through a deck of cards, dealing them neatly one at a time. "In thunder and lightning, really?"

"That wasn't my choice. I just happened upon it."

"Just like everything you do."

The bald man at the table was broad-shouldered and pot-bellied, with delicate wrists and thin legs. He wore a fine velvet coat over a ragged shirt, and his pants were mudstained and tattered, tucked firmly into shining snakeskin boots. He fanned his cards out and peered at his companion over them. His teeth were even and small and white except for where they were stained pale yellow at the edges. "Do you dislike it?"

She moved with exacting precision, never with anything out of place. Her face was long and thin, almost pinched, her red mouth set in a near-permanent pout. Twin tails of hair framed her face in perfect mirror images of each other. "I find it rather haphazard. As you always are. It's so messy, darling, how can you stand it?"

"It's my glory," he said. "Call."

The woman shook her head and laid a card down, nearly snapping it against the table as she did. "The game isn't over yet. I wonder if you'll regret it."

"We'll see, won't we?"

+++

Jack stayed tucked up in a ball in the window corner, balancing a cup of lukewarm hot chocolate between her fingers. Not too coincidentally, this put her as far away from Bunny as possible while still keeping them in the same room, because he was standing by the fire and staring resolutely into it, and hadn't said much of anything for the past hour as North and Tooth attempted to decipher Sandy's pictionary explanations. She couldn't really blame him for it, but all the same, she couldn't help but feel at least a _little_ insulted by it. You'd think no one had ever hugged the guy before, from the way he'd reacted -- then again, maybe no one ever did _because_ he acted like he'd been set on fire instead.

He'd just been surprised at first, his body stiff in his arms, and thinking back on it, she knew the exact minute he realized her physical shape, because he'd put his hands on her shoulders and shoved her back and his eyes had been open so wide and so round that she'd burst into laughter at the sight, in spite of herself.

Big mistake.

After some yelling -- mostly from him, about _if this is another joke of yours, Frostbite!_ and _what the hell are you trying to pull?!_ \-- Tooth had shown up and Jack wasn't too proud to admit she envied at how easily Tooth could always get Bunny to calm down. It was something in the tone of her voice, maybe, or the fact that she had centuries of practice -- either way, it was a skill Jack still hadn't mastered.

(And honestly, it wasn't normally such a big deal; she liked to rile Bunny up more than calm him down, but the one method she knew worked for sure -- running her fingers through the thick fur of his cheeks -- seemed pretty off-limits, given everything else going on.)

Then Sandy had showed up, and thank goodness for _that_ , because it meant Jack could actually explain what had happened -- the thundersnow, the weird creatures lurking in the trees, and her attempt to escape -- without having to field any more yelling from Bunny. Sandy had listened and nodded, and then he'd patted her hand and drifted over to smack Bunny across the back of the head, which had cut off the yelling pretty fast. (Jack had covered her mouth with her hands to keep from laughing again, since she was pretty sure that would have only made things worse, but it was still pretty funny to watch Bunny go wobbly and sneeze dreamdust before he recovered.)

Once he'd gotten attention from both Bunny and Tooth, though, he'd formed a creature out of his sand -- the same wolf-headed, dragon-winged snakelike creature that Jack had described, and she saw the way Bunny's eyes narrowed and his lips pulled back from his teeth; he only did that when he was well and truly worried. It was a little comforting, in a weird sort of way, that Bunny was still so easy to read.

After that, though, she'd been swept inside, and she'd had to tell her story again, this time with Bunny and Tooth _and_ North all listening, which had Bunny ranting on and on about things like _chance_ and _chaos_ and things that frankly sounded like he was looking for something to be angry at. The moon had no answers for them, which wasn't that much of a surprise, and Jack was grateful that she had at least been believed, but she certainly didn't have the patience herself to deal with Bunny's temper. She'd been on the verge of yelling something back when North had stepped in to talk Bunny down, and during that time Tooth vanished to the kitchens, coming back with a mug of hot chocolate for Jack and an apologetic smile.

"Sorry about this," she'd said. "This is definitely a little strange--"

"More than a little," Jack had replied with a wry grin, and Tooth's eyes immediately went to her teeth, which made her smile even more, because _some things_ at least, never changed. There was more she wanted to ask -- if she was so strange to them as _Jack Frost_ , who had they expected? Was it really so weird that she looked the way she did, with her pinned hair and her pants frayed to ribbons at the hems? From the way Bunny had yelled, they couldn't be that different, but ...

"Jack? Is all right with you?"

She started, fumbling with her cup a little as she looked up. North was looking at her, his brows drawn together in concern. They were all four looking at her, in fact -- even Bunny, though he was doing it sidelong, in that way he did when he thought he was being subtle.

"Uh," she said, and plastered the biggest smile she could onto her face. "Sure?"

North looked at her for a moment, his brows raising up -- then he laughed and shook his head a little. "Jack, you were not even listening."

She slouched a little lower in her seat, still cradling the cup to her chest. "I was," she began, and when he just continued to give her that same tolerant look, she amended, "I was and then I got distracted."

"Is fine. It has been interesting day!" He put a hand on her shoulder, so big and solid that it seemed to stretch across her entire back. Jack had always liked North's hands; even before she'd remembered a father, she'd remembered the feeling of this sort of contact. It was more of a relief than she wanted to admit that this was the same, even if she apparently wasn't. "But problem is, we do not know where things that chased you are. Do you remember where?"

"Canada," she said. "Out in the provinces. It's still cold enough that if I make it snow there, no one thinks it's weird."

North hummed low in his chest and nodded. "Can you take us to where?"

"We're going back?" She sat up a little more at that again, frowning. "Is that really a good idea?"

"Not in the slightest," Bunny answered for her. His voice was clipped, and Jack resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "But North's right for once. If those things are out there, we need to catch them before they start multiplying. If they find any humans ..."

"If they find any, then what?" She leaned a little to the side so she could look Bunny in the face. He looked distinctly uncomfortable, his ears pressed back and his lips thin, like they might pull back from his teeth at any minute. Usually it meant he was on the verge of picking a fight or running, and Jack still could never tell which it would be at any given time. "If no one even knows they're real, no one would be able to see them, right?"

"They're a bit different than that, mate." His nose twitched. "There are some things y'don't need to believe in to be affected by."

She made a little _go on_ gesture with her cup. "And?"

"You wouldn't be here talking to us if they just needed belief to sustain them," he said. "You'd be --" he hesitated abruptly, his whole body going completely still for a moment, "--well, you'd be wherever you were meant to be."

 _Like the Warren?_ she wanted to ask, but bit it back when he looked away again, shifting his weight from one foot to the other before he pulled away from the group, towards the door.

"It may be dangerous for everyone," North said, cutting neatly back into the conversation. "But it may be more dangerous for people who do believe. We shall go look, _da_?"

Jack sighed and put her mug aside. It took less than a minute for a couple of elves to clamber their way up and start squabbling over its remains. She stood and took up her staff, tucking it close between her arm and body, and looked at each of them in turn. North was earnest, as he always was; Tooth looked somewhere between nervous and encouraging; Sandy just smiled the same way he always did.

And Bunny wouldn't even look at her, so that was a lost case. She sighed again.

"All right," she said. "Let's go."

+++

The thundersnow was over when they arrived; the only reminders of its presence was the fresh dusting of snow on the trees. Jack wasn't terribly surprised, though a part of her was still a little disappointed; she still hadn't gotten a good look at the clouds before everything had gone wrong. _Better luck next time, Jackie._

North brought the sleigh down with more finesse than usual, pulling the reindeer up short when they would have just crashed into the soft piles of snowdrifts. Once they were settled on the ground, Jack hopped out as lightly as she could, looking around at the tall dark trees all around them. From the bottom they almost all looked the same, but after a bit of searching she saw one with a series of broken branches from trunk to tip, and made a beeline for it, keeping her staff tightly gripped with both hands.

Up close, she could see that the trunk itself had been ripped into, the dark thick bark torn in deep parallel slashes that exposed the pale heartwood underneath. She reached out but didn't quite touch the marks, looking up to the top of the tree.

"Here?" North asked.

"Here," she agreed. She turned to look at them again -- even Bunny had peeled himself out of the sled, to her surprise, though he still looked more than a bit green around the edges. "I was on ... that one, over there." She pointed. "And I was watching the thundersnow, when I saw it. And here--" she gestured up to the tree beside them, "is where I ended up falling."

North leaned in past her to examine the tree. He whistled low through his teeth, and unlike Jack, he did reach to touch the gouge marks, running a finger lightly over the ridges and scarring left behind. "It must have claws like a dragon for this," he said, but there was a light in his eyes, bright as always. "Perhaps a hide to match."

Tooth tsked. "You're too happy about that," she said, though she sounded more tolerant than annoyed. "If it does have a dragon's hide, then what will you do?"

"I will fight it!" he said, as happy as a kid on Christmas morning. "Has been long time since good fight. Even Pitch's Nightmares are not so tough, when there is even footing."

"We're supposed to be here on business, North!"

"And you didn't see the size of those teeth," Jack muttered. She looked around the forest again, uneasy. There was no sign of the things that had attacked her in the first place, but she couldn't make herself relax. Something nagged at just the edges of her awareness, like an itch she couldn't quite reach. North and Tooth were still arguing about the logistics of fighting a dragon and Bunny had withdrawn again, so she drifted over to Sandy instead. He gave her a small smile, though it looked about as strained as she felt.

"They're still here," she murmured. "I'm sure of it."

Sandy nodded, his smile fading. He put a finger to his lips, then began to drift upward, the edges of his cloud thinning out and spreading until they were nothing more than faint glittering specks of gold in the air. Jack watched for a moment, then looked at Bunny again.

Part of her knew she was only setting herself up for disappointment; that wasn't _her_ Bunny, and whatever she was like in this world, it was obvious she didn't have anything even remotely close to the same thing. As much as she wanted to reach out and try to comfort him, she was sure she still knew him well enough to know he wouldn't take it well.

In spite of that, though, she drifted towards him. His ears lifted a little, even though her footsteps were almost soundless, and as she drew close, he turned halfway towards her. "You want something, Frostbite?"

"Oh, you know." She shrugged and took a step closer. "Just wondering if you can hear anything, or if those big ears are just for show."

He turned more towards her, frowning. "Maybe I'm trying to listen, you think about that?"

"That's why I'm checking," she said, pushing up onto her toes for a moment, to be that little bit closer to eye-level with him. "Got anything?"

"It's quiet."

"Really!" She affected a wide-eyed look, putting a hand to her face. "Brilliant work, Kangaroo! Next thing you'll be telling me that snow's cold or something."

"It's _too_ quiet," he snapped. "Even with all the snow. Like someone's dropped a muffler on things." He took a cautious step away from her, his ears lifting as he did. "Even someone like you should notice that."

"Hey, what do you mean, 'someone like me'--"

He held up a finger, his ears now straight up; even North and Tooth had fallen silent. "Shhh."

Jack drew in a sharp breath and held it. Now that she was paying attention, she could sense the strange hush. In spite of her teasing, her own hearing was sharper than most; she'd learned to account for the muffling properties of snow. In that moment, though, there was a thick quality to the silence that felt almost sticky, rippling unpleasantly along her skin like a physical touch. All the normal sounds of a forest -- and even in the dead of winter, there was always _something_ , even if it was only the wind in the trees -- had been completely blotted out.

Epiphany struck in a sudden rush. Later, she wouldn't be able to say what exactly tipped her off -- a strange curl of Sandy's snow, maybe, or the slope of Bunny's toes against the snow, _something_ \-- but in that moment she _knew_ exactly where one of those thing was:

Right below Bunny's feet.

She lunged for him in a heartbeat, her hand outstretched. Her fingers brushed against his fur for a moment, warm and soft as she knew it would be--

\--and then something slammed up into him from below, throwing him high into the air like a child's rag doll, like he weighed _nothing_ , and heat blistered her hand so she jerked back on instinct, watching the long arc of his body in the air and the thing with its teeth buried in his side, staining the fur red.

One of his boomerangs hit the ground by her feet, sinking into the snow, and Jack screamed.

It rose out of her with the fury of a winter storm, and for a moment she was blinded by a sheer wall of white as the wind leaped to life at her cry. Snow froze to sharp ice, and she could feel it slicing against her exposed skin and ignored it, sweeping outward with her staff like a general leading her troops to battle.

And the wind and the snow, faithful to her as always, responded to her command.

She could only half see with the driving snow, but she could see the thing that had Bunny in its jaws, and that was all she needed. It recoiled as the wind struck it with the force of a battering ram, twisting furiously as ice shards lodged under its finely-set scales, and it _shook_ Bunny like a predator trying to finish a killing bite and Jack struck the ground hard with the butt of her staff.

Just as the thing had struck from below, ice crystallized and shot up, skewering the thing straight up the middle, nearly splitting it into even halves. The hideous hinged jaws finally opened, and Bunny tumbled down in a tangle of limbs, leaving an arc of dark blood in his wake. He hit the base of Jack's ice spoke and then rolled to lie in a crumpled heap and Jack threw herself forward again, hitting the ground with her knees and sliding with the rest of her momentum to his side.

"No," she gasped, her voice high and thin, so much like the wind. "No, no, no, no--"

Blood matted the whole of Bunny's right side, and she could only see several deep punctures -- though having seen the teeth on those things, she knew there had to be more. Her hands hovered over him, helpless; she didn't know the first thing about first aid; she didn't know anything about saving lives, but she could tell that this much blood wasn't good, and he was losing more with every second, she could _see_ it welling up fresh and dark--

North's arms came around her waist, lifting her up bodily away. Immediately she began to struggle, lashing out with all her limbs, clawing at the empty air as if she could find the purchase to tear herself free. "No, no, stop, what are you doing--!"

"Give them space," North rumbled in her ear, as Tooth and Sandy moved around him to gather by Bunny's side. His voice seemed to blur and meld with the roaring of blood in her ears; it took her a moment to register the words. Around her waist, his arms remained locked, unbreakable as iron bands.

"No!" she wailed, kicking harder with her feet. "No, let me--"

"You will just get in way!" he barked, and squeezed her harder, driving the breath from her in a rush. "Tooth and Sandy have experience, they will take care of him. Let them work."

She clawed at his arms for a moment, leaning forward as far as she could in his grip. "Aster! Aster, if you die, I'll never forgive you! I'll ruin every Easter from here till the end of time! I'll destroy your gardens, all of them! _Don't you dare die!_ "

And maybe it was just a brief hallucination, brought on her terror, but she thought she saw a sliver of green -- was he looking back at her? had he heard her name? -- and then North simply turned them, so that his bulk was between Jack and the others, and he was petting her hair with a heavy hand, crooning an old Russian lullaby to her. _Bayushki bayu, bayushki bayu._

It was enough, though. She slumped in his arms, the fight finally going out of her. "North," she said, her voice a low croak. "North, I want to go home."

"Soon, _snezhinka_ ," he murmured back, and continued his low singing. Jack leaned her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes, and tried to ignore how, deep down, she felt colder than she had in centuries.

+++

Blood was not a terrible thing to Toothiana; along with the teeth she collected every night, she had seen -- and participated -- in a number of fights over the centuries, though most of those were from the distant past. Gore still did not particularly trouble her.

However, there was a vast difference between an enemy bleeding at your feet and a close friend. She spared only the briefest moment of relief that North had carried Jack away as she bent over Bunny, her fingers combing lightly and carefully through the matted fur, trying to find all the puncture wounds. On the other side of Bunny's body, Sandy searched through what he could reach of the bandolier, past the explosive eggs and the two in progress -- now both bright red -- until he found the salve Bunny always kept on hand. He held it out.

"Thank you, Sandy," she murmured, absently, plucking feathers from her tail. It stung, and it would leave her off-balance for a few weeks until the new feathers grew back in, but the sacrifice hardly seemed like anything in comparison. She laid them across the punctures along Bunny's side in an overlapping mat, then took the salve carefully, mindful of her bloody fingers. Sandy's sand coiled itself in layers over the net of feathers, pressing hard enough that Bunny groaned a little, his voice low and disoriented. Tooth bent down closer to his head.

"Bunny? Can you hear me?"

He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and peeled his lips back from his teeth. "Bloody ..."

"Yeah, you are." Her voice was clipped. "We've got pressure on it, but it looks pretty bad. I think we're going to have to take you to the Warren -- you have supplies, don't you?"

He hissed, his brows drawing more tightly together. "... yeah ..."

"Portals are probably the best way," she said. "Can you give North permission?"

"P'rmission?"

"Bunny!" She hesitated, then tapped sharply at his cheek with one hand. "Come on, stay with me. We need your permission to get to the Warren from here."

"Nuh," he slurred. "Jus' gotta ... tap ..."

"You're not moving until I say so," she said. "And I say no. North has a snow globe on him, I know he does, but we can't get into the Warren unless you give the word. Bunny, please?"

He muttered something low and gurgling in his throat, but before Tooth could ask again, he groaned and gave the most miniscule of nods.

She'd take it. In a moment she was back on her feet, wobbling in the air as she hurried back to North and Jack. "North! We need to get him to the Warren. He's given his permission, can you--"

"In my pocket," he said, his voice low. She pulled up to his side and cut off her question at the sight of Jack, face buried against North's shoulder and both hands twisted hard in his jacket. He looked at Tooth with an apologetic shrug, but she nodded, dipping lower to reach into his pocket.

She had heard Jack scream too.

It took only a moment to find one of the snow globes; North's pockets were impossibly deep, but he kept a healthy supply on his person, even out of season. She pulled it free with a noise of triumph, then drew her arm back and chucked it at a nearby tree. It would have been a lie to claim she didn't take some satisfaction at the noise of shattering glass. The familiar green expanse of the Warren resolved itself, and North went first, still carrying Jack. Tooth glanced back and nodded to Sandy, who curled more tendrils of sand under Bunny, lifting him with ginger care, and carrying him over to the portal and through it.

She lingered long enough to glance back at the skewered thing. They would have to come back for it later, certainly, but for now, there was something far more important to worry about.

The warmth of the Warren was a welcome change from the cold, and she could feel herself relaxing into it with relief, her wings spreading wider to soak in some of the sun.

Sandy had laid Bunny down in a thick patch of clover, still fussing with adjusting him just so, still keeping up the pressure on the net of her feathers. North had also put Jack down, though she seemed to have composed herself, watching from an overly safe distance. Tooth hesitated, then reached out to beckon to her as she knelt by Bunny's side. Jack looked both so surprised and wary that Tooth's breath caught a little. Maybe there were some things about Jack Frost that were the same, no matter how different the physical form was.

Slowly, walking mostly on her toes, Jack made her way over. "What?"

"I need your help." Tooth smiled as widely as she could, trying to project as much encouragement into it as possible. "I'm going to be checking on his injuries -- if they're no longer bleeding, they need to be cleaned. I need rags and water -- preferably hot. There's a few regular streams in the Warren, too; Sandy can show you if--"

"I know where they are," Jack said quickly. "Hot water, huh? I could just--" She made a weak little gesture with her staff.

"Mm, well--" Tooth hesitated. "Both, maybe. But the hot water first. I need to get this cleaned up."

Jack nodded, shuffling back a few steps before she turned and nearly ran. Tooth watched her go for a moment, then turned her attention back to her injured patient. To her relief, when she peeled off the feathers -- slowly, careful that they didn't catch on the bloodied fur -- the bleeding had stopped, leaving only the mess behind. Bunny groaned now and then, but didn't stir, which was both worried and relieved her. He could be the absolute worst patient when he put his mind to it -- but in order to be that, he had to be feeling well enough to actually respond ...

"Got it!" Jack called, and Tooth looked up to see her lugging a large steaming pot over, holding it out a ginger distance from her body. At Tooth's surprised look, she gave a small sheepish grin. "There's a hot spring in the deepest part of the Warren. I just melted some snow in it. It's clean, promise."

Tooth smiled her thanks, then set to work cleaning the injuries. Some of the fur would just have to be snipped, she thought; it was too matted to be salvaged, and it would give the injuries room to breathe as they healed. For the moment, though, her concern was cleaning them, and she worked methodically and carefully, mostly ignoring how both Jack and Sandy hovered to watch. North, bless him, kept his distance, and after a moment she heard the sound of glass breaking as he slipped through another portal.

By the time she was done and actually working on snipping away the fur (in spite of Jack's protests when she'd realized) to bandage the puncture wounds (twelve in all, but only three that were worryingly deep), North had returned with a couple of his yeti, heaving the carcass of the dead creature between the three of them.

Jack shot to her feet at once, tense and narrow-eyed. "What are we going to do with that?"

"I do not yet know," North admitted, as they dropped the thing in a heap, away from Bunny's resting spot and the entrances to the tunnels of the Warren. "But, it seemed like a bad idea to just leave it. Just in case, yes?"

"Just in case _what_ ," Jack muttered, but then just bit her lip, staring at the carcass like she expected it to spring to life again.

"There were others, you said," North said. "You cannot use ice on them all--"

"Watch me!"

"--Bunny is my friend, too." He met her eyes evenly, without blinking. "I am owing them one, as they say. This skin, it is tougher than a Nightmare's or a Fearling's. I will learn it, so my blades will be true."

Jack took a deep breath and held it for a few long beats. Then she sighed, dropping back to a crouch, still between the carcass and Bunny. Tooth finished with the last of the bandage work in silence, wiping her hands as clean as she could on the one remaining rag. North always made that sort of talk look so effortless, but she was more grateful than envious in that moment.

"I'm going to get cleaned up," she said softly, and they both looked at her. "I'll take a look when I get back, all right?"

Jack nodded, shuffling closer to Bunny as she did. She probably thought she was being subtle about it, and in deference to that, Tooth hid her smile. North squeezed her shoulder briefly as she passed him, and she brushed his fingers with her own lightly and headed into the tunnels proper. A brief chill followed her, leaving a trail of feathery frost along the wall, vaguely in the shape of birds in flight. She stopped and ran her fingers along it, then smiled.

"You're welcome, Jack," she said.

+++

Bunny opened his eyes and immediately regretted it.

His entire right side ached like fire, to the point where even breathing was its own special little agony, and his head pounded in heavy time with his heartbeat. The light was too bright, adding just that extra jab of pain, and he squeezed his eyes shut again, a low groan rising out of his chest.

That was a mistake too, because almost at once he heard something moving in a flurry, and then cold, cold hands touched his arm. If he were honest, they actually felt pretty good, helping to numb some of the ache in his everything. "As-- Bunny? You all right? Can you hear me? How do you feel? Should I get-- Tooth! North! Sandy! He's awake!"

"Strewth," he groaned, "just stab me now an' put me out of my misery."

"Don't even _joke_ about that," the person next to him growled, and the voice's difference registered enough to make him crack an eye open. Jack was hovering half over him, his face stern and his-- oh, wait.

Hers.

"Y'smell exactly the same," he told her, closing that eye again. "Not fair."

"What?" she asked, but then Tooth was there, replacing those nice cool hands with her own, thin and sharp-fingered and businesslike.

"How are you feeling?"

"Like I was chewed on and spat back out."

"What a coincidence." Her voice was dry. "Is it all over, or is there anywhere in particular?"

He grunted, then hissed when she pressed those pointy fingers along his side. "Bloody--!"

"Yes, precisely." She prodded at his side a little more and finally hit a spot that made him flinch away with a hiss. "This is the worst spot?"

"They're all pretty bad, if you ask me," he managed, through gritted teeth. "Tell me, do you sharpen your fingers on purpose or something?"

"Only for bad children."

"I'm not--"

"It's probably time to change these, anyway. Hold _still_ , Bunny, or I'll ask Jack to freeze you in place."

Bunny cracked an eye open again, looking past Tooth to Jack, who was still hovering. "... you wouldn't."

"I would," both of them answered as one.

He groaned and dropped his left arm over his eyes. "Fine, fine. Do your worst."

"It's for the best, though," Tooth said. She shifted against his side, and he couldn't help the low angry sound that he made as she began to unhook the bandages, peeling them away. He could feel fur pulling away, even though she was gentler than her words had implied. With his injuries exposed to the air, it seemed like he could feel them even more acutely, throbbing in time with his aching head.

Jack drew in a sharp breath, and he heard the sound of nervous shifting. "Oh ..."

"You're extremely lucky," Tooth said. "If it had been just a little deeper, it would've gotten your organs."

"Hallelujah," he muttered. "I'll be sure to give proper thanks later."

"Someone was looking out for you, that's for sure." There was an odd weight to Tooth's voice, like she was trying to imply something, but Bunny's head ached too much to want to try and puzzle out the meaning. He ground his teeth and focused on holding as still as he could as she continued unwrapping bandages, though he couldn't help the flinch when something cold and sticky-wet touched his side.

"Oi, what!"

"This is _your_ salve, you know," she said. "I think it's helping. Hold _still_ , I said."

"I'm bloody well trying, you feathered little tyrant!"

"Someone has to be, if you're going to be a terrible patient."

"I'm not--" He flinched again, hissing a rude word in his native tongue, long-dead and gone. "C'mon, Tooth, have a heart!"

"I could say the same to you! You really scared us, you know? So the least you can do is let us take care of you."

There were things he knew he could have said to that, but he forced himself instead to take a deep breath, holding it to the count of ten before letting it out again. "... How bad is it?"

"I told you." Tooth's voice went tighter for a moment, clipped, and he knew her well enough to guess the expression on her face that would match -- brows drawn together, mouth pressed into a flat line, eyes downcast. "It was really lucky. As it is, I don't think you'll be winning any races for a long time."

He hissed again, digging his claws into the soft clover under him. "Ah." A beat passed, and then he said, "What about the thing that--"

"Jack took care of it."

There was that odd note in her voice again, like she was trying to tell him something without the words. Bunny moved his arm enough to look up at her face and found her apparently focused on her work with his injuries. He tilted his head just a little to look at Jack, who was now seated a short distance away, cross-legged and watching. For a moment her expression was completely open, the whole of her attention focused on him. It was more than a little unnerving; even in his youth, during courtships with his own, he'd never seen anyone look at him like that, as if he were a cornerstone to their entire world.

What sort of world had that girl even come from?

A moment later, though, she caught him looking and leaned back, schooling her face into a more familiar cocky smile, an eyebrow crooked up in challenge. It was so seamless that he couldn't help but wonder how long it had taken her to perfect it -- and if she could pull it out at a moment's notice, what about the Jack Frost that he knew?

"What," she said, drawing him out of his thoughts, and tossed her head a little. "You didn't think a little snow and ice couldn't do anything?"

Tooth coughed, but said nothing. Bunny wrinkled his nose.

"What did you do?"

"I took care of it, like Tooth said." She made a show of buffing her nails on her shirt, examining them with an air of careless ease -- as if she hadn't been the first one by his side when he'd woken, or if she hadn't called his name ...

She knew his name, he realized, and the sudden epiphany hit him hard enough to make his whole body jolt. Tooth squawked -- _Bunny, what did I *tell* you!_ \-- but he hardly heard it, lowering his arm to stare openly at the stranger Jack Frost, the girl with the same face and name and powers as the person Bunny had come to count as a good friend over the years.

"You know my name," he said.

Jack went very still. Tooth's hands on his bandages also paused. Bunny shifted a little, wincing at the stabbing pain, but managed to push himself up onto a elbow, still staring.

"Who told you my name?"

She pressed her lips together and looked away. "Who do you think?"

"Why--" He cut himself off with a small shake of his head. "When?"

Jack rolled her eyes. She bent her legs up, closer to her chest, as if she meant to fold into herself -- and, perhaps not coincidentally, put her into a crouch that she could launch herself from if she chose. "Does it matter?"

"Of course it _matters_ , you--" He tried to sit up further, then cringed as his ribs screamed protest. A moment later Tooth scruffed him, pulling at him until he was forced to lie back again. He kept watching Jack, watching uncertainty flicker across her face before it was masked again. "Jack--"

"I think I'm going for a walk," she announced, hopping to her feet. "I won't go far, I just wanna stretch my legs for a bit. Later."

"Hey--" Bunny tried to shift up again, then cringed himself back to a prone position at the stabbing pain in his side. He dug the claws of his good hand into the ground, grinding his teeth together in frustration.

"You know better than that," Tooth said quietly.

He finally turned his head to her, frowning. "But why--?"

"I think you'd be better off asking yourself that." She sighed, fastening the last of his bandages and sitting back. "North knows, doesn't he?"

"... Yeah. Badgered it straight out of me, centuries ago."

"And Sandy?"

"He knew it before -- before." He shrugged with his good shoulder as best he could, lying down. "You can't really keep secrets from Sandy, either."

"And you told me after the last time we pushed Pitch back, before Jack joined us." She leaned back on her heels, regarding him thoughtfully. "Because we'd crossed swords together and shared blood."

"Yeah ..."

"Why did you never tell Jack?" She fixed him with an unblinking stare. "Maybe it wasn't a fight like we used to have, but he did more than that. He saved the last light for us. He used _you_ to do it."

Bunny squirmed a little, shrugging again. "He was also the one who buggered things up in the first place."

"Bunny--"

He rubbed at his face with his good hand and sighed. "... The time didn't seem right," he muttered."

"What?"

"I wanted to," he said, and the admission pained him more than he wanted to admit. "I did, but it's not -- a name is an important thing, Tooth. You tell it for a reason, and you don't just _say_ it. That's never been how we do it."

She drew in a sharp breath, but whatever she saw in his face made her own expression soften. She reached out and laid both of her hands carefully on his right hand, light enough that the touch didn't even hurt. "Okay. Part two, then -- did you notice how she wants to call you by that instead?"

He moved his fingers just enough to peer at her. "What?"

"You've known the rest of us for a while," she said, "and we know your name, but we don't call you by it. Because it's a special thing to you."

"What're you trying to get at?"

"She keeps almost calling you _Aster_ , not _Bunny_. Why's that, I wonder?"

Bunny moved his hand enough to stare openly. Tooth shrugged and got to her feet.

"North is still taking that thing apart. I'm going to check to see he's not making a mess everywhere."

"Of course he is," he said automatically, though he continued to stare at her, still stunned as if she'd slapped him outright. "It's North. He can't help leaving a mess."

She flashed him a bright smile, showing off all of her nice white teeth, then headed off. Bunny thunked his head against the ground a few times -- which didn't do much good for his headache -- staring up at the familiar canopy above him.

A name was a precious thing, especially to those whom a physical shape was often more a means to an end than a piece of one's identity. The last time anyone had called him _Aster_ consistently was so long ago he hardly remembered them, his brave and bold warrenmates, all of them cut down while he was away and distracted with ridiculous humans and their short fleeting lives.

But in the end, one of those humans was still with him even now, when those others had long since returned to dust. In fact, he could hear North cheerfully explaining to Tooth -- and in detail -- what he'd learned from the impromptu dissection. The ears weren't for show, no matter what Jack thought--

Jack. Bunny covered his face with a hand again. It hadn't been a lie that he'd told Tooth -- he _had_ intended to tell Jack his name after the last business with Pitch; as angry as he'd been, in the end, the boy had earned that symbol of trust. He'd had the best of intentions of it, but every chance had nagged at the back of his mind. _Not yet. Not this time. It isn't right yet._

But wherever that other Jack Frost had come from, whatever world she lived in, the Bunny she'd known had found his right moment and told her, and then ...

And then?

He rubbed harder at his face. And then there had been _something_ , so that Jack could use his name without a second thought. He'd thought he'd heard it, and he'd thought it a woman long-dead, but instead ...

"Bloody hell," he muttered. "What am I going to do?"

+++

As Tooth had said, and as Jack had known, there were several streams that ran through the Warren, both above and below the surface. One in particular ran ice-cold and clear, hidden from sight. It was used primarily for cleaning and for cooling down during the very hottest days of summer. Even if Bunny preferred warmer weather, there was a point where even he had to call it quits.

Jack waded into it up to her ankles, watching as the current caught the frayed ends of her pants and tugged at them playfully. She set her staff carefully down into the water as well. The surface crystallized into ice almost immediately, though it didn't freeze the whole way down. She was more drained than she wanted to admit.

And more than that, she felt horribly, painfully lonely. More than anything else, she wanted to stay by Bunny's side, but she was pretty sure that would be a disaster and a half. She was fairly sure he suspected -- and even if he didn't, Tooth did.

The whole dance had been hard enough with _her_ Bunny, with Aster, who had known _her_ and all her specifics, who still held a grudge for Easter of '68 but who grew honeysuckle specifically for her, plaiting them into crowns to set against her hair when she wasn't looking; who trusted her with the most delicate tropical plants of his garden, who argued and fought with her, who shouted without thinking and apologized with a rainbow of tulips rather than with words.

She missed him like a physical ache, and how pathetic was that? She'd gone nearly three hundred years with no reliable contact, and certainly no one who'd looked at her and called her by name. They'd been apart for longer than just a few hours; their worst fight had left them on opposite of the globe for nearly six months before North had gotten fed up with them using him as a go-between and locking them in a cabin together. She'd always prided herself on being able to handle herself alone -- she didn't _like_ it, but who did? The important thing was that she _could_ and she _did_ , and ... and if she closed her eyes for too long she saw blood on the snow again, and enough of it to make her sick. She'd _had_ him, she'd been so close, and if she'd been just a little faster, then what?

Jack sucked in a quick shaky breath and smacked her own cheek a few times, squeezing her eyes shut. It was fine. _Bunny_ was fine -- hurt, but not irrevocably. He would heal and then she'd stop feeling sick just looking at him. He was already awake and trying to move; that had to be a good sign, right? Maybe even if she hadn't actually kept him safe, she'd at least saved his life.

Even thinking that, though, it was a long time before she could make herself leave the water and head back above ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME:
>
>> "Y'arright there, Snowflake?"
>> 
>> "Snowflake?" he tried to ask, but his face was still mushed up against Bunny's shoulder, so it came out more like "Snflke?" instead.


	5. o lay me down gently

"Even their bellies are armored," Bunny said, drawing a hand down to demonstrate. "If you can get in through an opening, bully for you, but the trouble is getting to that in the first place."

North hummed, rubbing at his chin. "But there is weakness," he said. "When I cut, I make good deep slice. Hah!" He made a slashing motion with one arm.

"Because you were lucky," Bunny said. "Probably best not to rely too heavily on that next time.

As North huffed, Tooth leaned forward, brushing just the tips of her fingertips along the close-set scales. A small frown drew her brows together. "These feel more like bone."

"It won't be the same from one to the other," he said. "Same basic shape, same basic setup, but the devil's in all the details. Most of them are poisonous in some way or the other." He pointedly didn't look at the black scorch marks on the floor, which no amount of dedicated scrubbing would be able to remove. "Best not to let them get too close."

"I didn't do it on _purpose_ ," Jack grumbled from the window seat, where he'd been ensconced after his leg had been bandaged. "It wasn't like we could take the time to just stop and deal with things."

"Next time, tuck those dangly bits of yours in."

"Dangly?!" Jack sat up straighter, biting back a wince when the movement banged his ankle against the cushions. "My legs are not dangly! Maybe yours are, but me--"

Sandy rose up before him, shaking a finger scoldingly. Jack scowled, slumping back against the window again. "I'm fine, really, it's just my leg. The rest of me--"

"We don't know if this thing had worse things in its bite or not," Bunny said. He crouched down by the thing's severed head now, gently prising the jaws apart with his claws. "So until then, cool your jets."

"Ha ha, very funny."

"I'm dead serious." He glanced up over the thing's head, his mouth set in a flat line. "Getting yourself all het up isn't going to do you much good anyway, but it'll be worse if you end up making yourself sick."

"He's right, Jack." Tooth fluttered to him, though she at least looked sympathetic. "You should let that leg sit for a while anyway. It's not going to help you heal any faster if you put weight on it."

"It already feels better!" he protested. It was half a lie; his leg at least was numb now, due to some judicious direction of his power. A thin layer of ice was wrapped around Tooth's bandage job, though he'd avoided his ankle and foot for mobility. (Or, at least, as much as he _could_ have, which he was sure was more than anyone was giving him credit for.) "I bet I could walk on it--"

"Please don't," Tooth said, and Sandy nodded firmly in agreement. "You need to _rest_ , Jack."

"I've rested! I'm fine! See--" He kicked out with his bad leg, then cringed when he hit the wall with his toes. Neither of them looked terribly convinced. "I just have to get used to it, and then--"

"It's clear," Bunny said. "You're not poisoned, Frostbite. Congratulations."

Jack rolled his eyes. "I could have told you that."

"You don't need to feel it to be affected, mate." Bunny sat back, holding up a jagged fang, balanced between his claws. "Looks like you got out lucky this time, though." He tossed it, gently underhand, to Tooth, who fumbled and caught it, then made a face.

"Oh, this is _terrible_."

"Yeah, I know."

"I don't think this has seen cleaning in its whole life!" She held it up, cupped between her hands, and frowned deeply. "Oh, gross, there's still bits of stuff stuck in it! Bunny!"

"Sorry, darlin'." He stood slowly and carefully, wincing as he put a hand to the small of his back and stretched. There was a series of small pops and cracks, though he didn't look that much more pleased after straightening further. "But if there's anything you can get out of it, it'd be much appreciated."

"There's so much _plaque_ , though," she sighed, then gave a full-body shudder as she closed her fingers over the fang. She closed her eyes and her wings slowed their frantic beating, so that she sank down until her feet were resting lightly on the ground. Jack was distracted out of his sulk by watching her, curious; he'd seen her open her memory-boxes a couple of times before over the years, but never anything like this, pulling something out of the raw material itself. A faint golden glow sparked between her fingers and her frown deepened, her brows drawing closer together over her closed eyes.

After a moment, though, she gasped and jerked as if struck. Her eyes flew open and she threw the fang as hard as she could against the ground; it hit and bounced twice before skittering half under the thing's body. She staggered back until she hit the window seat that Jack was on, and he scrambled to catch her shoulders when it looked like she might crumple on the spot. Sandy patted her arm gently as well, watching her face with concern.

"Oh," she whispered. "Oh, no."

"Tooth?" North's voice was a low rumble. "What did you see?"

She shook her head fiercely. "I don't -- I don't _know_ ," she admitted. "Just ... it wasn't even darkness. There was so much of it, and it was so ..." A shiver went through her and she wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing at them. "They were waiting somewhere, and they were so hungry, and ..." She rubbed at her face with both hands. "Someone opened the door."

Bunny's ears went up for a moment, then straight back again. "Someone what?!"

"There wasn't a door, and then there was," Tooth said. "And it opened, and someone said--" She shuddered and rubbed at her ears, as if to clear them of noise. "Someone told them to come, so they did. And they followed it, and then--" She turned to glance back at Jack, who sat up a little more at her look. "Then they were in a snowy forest, and there was a girl on a tree, and the same voice said-- 'that one.'"

Jack slouched down again. He pulled his hood up and over his face.

"So they _were_ looking for Jack." North stroked his beard, frowning deeply. "But why?"

"I told you," he muttered. "I have no idea."

"It's chance," Bunny said, almost at the same time. "He was probably the best choice out of all of us."

Jack peeked out from under his hood, watching as Bunny began to pace -- slow and ginger, but moving back and forth across the length of North's sitting room. "Chance is what gives the possibility for choice. And the choice you make can sometimes shape everything that happens after." He turned his head towards Jack, meeting his eyes for a moment. "A regular human isn't going to change much. A spirit? Probably more. And a Guardian ..."

"Is this seriously because I said yes to you guys?"

"Of which there are five anyway," Bunny said, raising his voice over Jack's, "means that there's a lot more branching going on here." He shook his head. "It really could've been any of us, mate. Now that we know what they wanted, though, we can do something."

"Like what?" Tooth was still rubbing at her ears, lips pursing together.

"Sandy?" Bunny turned to him.

Sandy nodded. He spread his arms wide, and between them golden sand swirled until it formed a bleak landscape, punctuated by two great gates standing side by side to each other. Bunny smiled, and it was narrow and almost mean, all grim satisfaction.

"We're gonna go pay folks a proper visit."

+++

To Jack's surprise, Sandy was the one who handled the travel preparations, as they were. After Bunny's announcement, he'd moved to the center of the room and cupped his hands together, blowing on them as if they were cold. At first nothing happened, and then Jack noticed that the sand pouring spilling between Sandy's fingers was a deep blue in color, so close to black that for a moment he thought it was Pitch's nightmare sand all over.

The blue sand began to pool around Sandy's feet and then spread, further and further. Tooth exclaimed briefly as it brushed around her feet, and both of North's eyebrows rose up impressively far. Bunny, for his part, went straight to Jack, and without so much as a by-your-leave, swept him up into a princess hold.

"Hey!"

"It's either this or the sack again. Quit your bellyachin'."

"I can walk on my own, you know!"

Before Bunny could answer, Sandy waved to catch his attention. The entire floor was covered in the shifting blue sand, ankle-deep on North, paler at the edges and nearly black directly under Sandy himself. He smiled brightly at them all, then held his nose and sank out of sight.

"Not a bad idea," Bunny said. "Might wanna hold your breath, Frostbite."

"I'll do it if you just-- _hey_!" He struggled a moment, then settled for covering his nose and mouth with both hands as Bunny carried him to the darker center of the sand and jumped.

A chill went through his whole body for a brief bright second, alien and familiar at the same time. He was obviously no stranger to the cold, but this wasn't the chill of winter, or even just normal low temperatures, but this was more like stepping into a home that didn't belong to him. There were parts he could recognize, and some of it settled comfortably over his shoulders, but the rest didn't quite fit. The world went blue-tinted before his eyes, but trying to watch the glittering particles of sand made him dizzy and he had to close them.

Then there was a jolt and he jumped a little, eyes flying open as he looked around.

Overhead, the sky was slate-blue, gleaming white in scattered patches. The ground itself was scrubbed and barren, covered in a fine gray sand that stirred and spun in breezes too faint to feel. He loosened his hands, automatically trying to struggle free, even when Bunny's arms tightened around him.

"What _is_ this place?"

"The Soft Lands," an unfamiliar voice breathed. It was low and harsh at the edges, though it began to soften the more it spoke. "Between Waking and Dreaming. Near the Gates of Horn and Ivory."

Jack leaned as far as he could in Bunny's arms, wide-eyed. "Sandy?!"

Sandy smiled at him; sand clouded around his mouth like mist with each word. "Hello, Jack."

"You can talk?" He looked up at Bunny, wide-eyed. "He can talk?!"

"Only in the Dreaming." Bunny shrugged and adjusted his grip on Jack. "Lead the way, Sandy."

Sandy smiled and set off. Bunny followed, and Jack squirmed until he could pop his chin over Bunny's shoulder, looking at Tooth and North. "Did you guys know?"

"No," said North, but Tooth gave an embarrassed little smile and shrug.

"There was a bit of an incident with a boggart a decades ago," she said. "If not for that, I wouldn't have."

Jack slumped a bit more in Bunny's arms, resting his chin harder against a fuzzy shoulder. "Next thing you'll be telling me that there's really a Mrs. Claus or something."

"Actually," North began, then laughed when Jack glared at him and Tooth elbowed him in the side.

Grumpy now, Jack slumped lower, turning to look at the path ahead of them. At the top of a steep slope, two structures rose up starkly against the pale sky. One appeared to be a set of long, long tusks sunk deep into the gray ground, rough and yellowed at the edges. Strange serpentine shapes had been carved into the lengths of both, some of them so similar to the things that had attacked Jack that he felt a pang in his injured leg just looking at them. A glimmering gossamer veil, embroidered with silver stars, was strung between them, fluttering in an unfelt breeze.

The other looked more like a pair of double doors standing freely, carved out of what appeared to be bone, and polished until it seemed to shine with its own light. The hinges and lock were made of a jet-black material, so dark that it seemed to absorb the gate's light into itself.

Sandy headed straight towards the first of them, catching the veil in both hands and drawing it back before gesturing at the rest of them to go ahead. Bunny marched through with no hesitation, and Jack was almost grateful for that, for just a moment -- as they passed through, he saw the carvings on the tusks move, all the rough-hewn heads turning to watch them go.

Then they were through the gates, and it was like walking into a completely different world. Everything looked like a page ripped out of a kid's sketchbook, drawn in broad crayon strokes, complete with a crude spike-rayed sun up high overhead and a riot of lopsided flowers all over the place. In the distance there was a blocky brown shape that might have been a house or a bear; it was hard to tell. Unlike the Soft Lands, there was a whole riot of colors here, each so bright and jarring that it hurt to look at anything for too long. He had to turn his face into Bunny's shoulder for a moment, and when he did he felt the arms around him tighten for just a moment.

He didn't lift his head until he heard the sound of knocking, and when he looked, he saw they'd reached the brown thing -- up close, it at least looked more like a house -- and Sandy was rapping his knuckles against a crudely-drawn door. The whole thing looked so bizarrely two-dimensional that he actually jumped a little when the door actually opened, swinging inward.

The man who answered was tall and thin almost to the point of parody. He had a pinched face and narrow eyes, as gray as the Soft Lands had been. Looking at him, Jack wasn't sure he could believe there were actually bones in his body; where would they even fit?

"May I help you?"

"We'd like to speak with the Lady," Sandy said, in his whispery voice. "If she's in."

The man's lip curled in a perfect neat arch. "The Lady does not associate with ... riffraff."

"Yeah?" It was Bunny who answered, shifting Jack's weight neatly into the crook of one arm like it was nothing (and that was both kind of cool and really annoying in ways Jack didn't want to consider too deeply) and pulled something out of his bandolier: the same fang he'd had Tooth examine earlier. "Riffraff doesn't carry something like this, now, do they?"

If anything, his face got even more sour. His curled lip went up even higher, exposing the length of a gleaming white fang. He pulled back, though, allowing just enough room for the five of them to squeeze through, single-file. As they passed, from the corner of one eye, Jack saw his shape shift and change; for a moment he looked less human and more like some giant looming bird, with yellow eyes and a serrated beak.

But when he turned his head, it was just a frowning man, watching them with open disapproval.

Inside the little house, everything was warmly dark; stray beams of light made their way through the crayon-colored walls, but only just enough to show the room was empty.

"So?" North said. "We are now here. Why are we here?"

"We're waiting," Sandy whispered. "She'll be here soon."

"Um," said Tooth, as she moved to stand by one of the small sources of light, "not that I'm really doubting either of you following up on what you think is the right idea or anything, but ... why _are_ we here? And who are we waiting for?"

"Yes, yes, who is here that is so important? If they are so strong, why did we not call for them before?" North's footsteps were heavy across the wood floor, creaking as he moved first to Tooth's side, then over to Bunny. "Why this, why not Man in Moon?"

"There are things older than the moon and the stars," Bunny said. "The lady'll be one of them, so behave yourself, you ruddy old Cossack."

"Ah!" North laughed. "I am always charming to ladies."

"The Lady of False Dreaming," Sandy whispered, and even with a voice, his was still so soft it almost went unheard. "She's the only one who knows where the doors are, anymore."

"There are more?" Jack squirmed again, very nearly clocking Bunny in the face with his staff. "How many? Do we have to worry about some crazy person opening them all up?"

"There were two great prisons," Sandy said, his voice dropping even lower, almost sad. "One that was opened aeons ago. It was for a different sort of creature."

"You people really know how to reassure a guy ..."

"Shhh," Bunny said. In the very center of the room, a small pinpoint of light had flared to life. It was white at first, but as it expanded, it took on a rainbow sheen, like oil over water, the colors moving and twisting like living things. The light grew in steady heartbeat pulses until it was nearly the same size as Tooth, and then it unfurled, pieces of it peeling and fading into the dark, until all that was left was the multicolor-slicked shape of a kneeling woman.

When she lifted her head, though, her face was smoothly blank, without even a vague curve to indicate where an eyes or nose or mouth might be. She raised her hands, and Sandy reached to take them at once. Where they touched, butterflies with one golden wing and one rainbow one fluttered off to fade into the shadows.

"It was just today, we think," Sandy whispered. "There was a rip."

The woman tilted to the side, though her long flowing hair remained in place. Shapes flickered in the moving colors: a running horse, a coiled snake, a human heart stabbed through with a knife.

"The Greater Wyrms still sleep," he said. "But the Lesser ones are free, and they are hungry. They're hunting. They've targeted us, and we don't know why. Or how to stop them."

She remained still, then she turned -- and though she didn't let go of Sandy's hands, her whole body just stretched with the movement, pulling long and thin as she moved towards Bunny and Jack. He recoiled a little as she leaned in close; that featureless face was even more unnerving up close. Her neck stretched as she examined him from various angles, and then she retreated to examine his bandaged leg instead.

From the darker corners of the room, a hissing scrabbling noise started up. The woman touched her face directly to one of Jack's exposed toes.

Pain exploded in his leg in sudden violent intensity. He jerked back so hard he nearly fell out of Bunny's arms, though he couldn't get the breath to cry out. The whole thing felt like it was on fire, spreading further up his body, and dimly he could hear the others shouting but it _hurt_ and it was _hot_ and he couldn't even think through the pain, lashing back at the closest thing.

Someone cried out, though he couldn't tell who, and then he was suddenly enveloped in warmth, gentler than the heat of the pain, which smoothed out the burn and surrounded him so completely that he couldn't escape. He struggled a little, automatically, dimly aware of a distant thumping sound -- someone's heartbeat, steady and true. A low voice crooned to him in a language he didn't recognize, and a dull pressure ran through his hair, soothing, over and over until he could breathe properly again.

Jack opened his eyes and found his face was buried in Bunny's fur. He was clinging like a barnacle except for his one leg, which he could feel dangling loosely, but no matter how much he tried to convince himself to just lift it, he couldn't seem to make it obey his commands.

"Y'arright there, Snowflake?"

"Snowflake?" he tried to ask, but his face was still mushed up against Bunny's shoulder, so it came out more like "Snflke?" instead.

There was a gentle pressure on his shoulders and he made a brief noise of protest before he allowed himself to be pushed back. Bunny was leaning over him, and though his hands on Jack were soft, there was a spark of deep, deep anger in his eyes. For once, though, it didn't seem to be aimed at Jack himself, because when he leaned back, Bunny looked up, over his head, scowling.

"What the bloody hell was that for? This isn't some kind of game!"

Sandy said something in his whispery voice, but Bunny cut him off with a snort. "There are easier ways of doing that sort of thing! We brought her a fang and everything, the least she could've done was--"

"Bunny," Tooth said, and he stopped with a low growl in his throat. "More importantly, is Jack all right?"

"M'fine," Jack muttered, ducking his head a little. When he glanced sideways, he could see a wide streak of ice painted across the floor, and there was no mistaking where that had come from. "... Did I mess things up?"

"No!" Tooth said at once, and Bunny squeezed his shoulders at the same time. "No, it's not messed up, it's just--"

"Is Bunny's fault," North said, though he sounded more pleased than annoyed by this. "After _vedma_ hurt you, he throws the most impressive fit! Very loud, very threatening. A plus for effort!"

Bunny twitched. His nose wrinkled up. "Like you weren't doin' any yelling of your own, you bloody liar."

"We might have all done a bit of yelling," Tooth said, like a confession. "But I guess we kind of scared her off in the process ..."

"Serves her right, that no-good little--"

She cleared her throat pointedly and Bunny subsided again, though Jack, still pressed up close to him, could feel the rumble of his angry subvocal growling.

" _Anyway_ ," she went on, "so that's one avenue down -- sorry, Sandy -- so we're a bit stuck. We were hoping she'd be a lead, but I guess that was a bust ..."

"What even happened?" Jack finally shifted a little, turning to face the others properly. His leg continued to drag, but he found he couldn't make himself worry about it too much yet. "She got really friendly with my foot, and then?"

"She tried to read the injury," Sandy said. He drifted closer, his small face bright with worry, until he could put a hand on Jack's arm. "She hasn't dealt with anything that wasn't a dream in ... a very long time. She didn't mean any harm--"

"Yeah, well, she bloody well botched that one up, didn't she?"

"But I think she's probably not going to help us any more." He patted Jack's arm, ignoring the louder growl in Bunny's throat. "That's all right. We tried."

"And do what?" Jack looked from him to Bunny, and then at Tooth and North. "Because maybe I'm just missing something here, but it seems like we came all this way for a whole lot of nothing."

"Not quite." To his surprise, it was Bunny that spoke up; he still looked angry, but there was a gleam in his eyes that was more determined than not. "When Lil' Miss Nosey took off, she left a bit of a path behind her. If we follow it, we'll find the right direction where we need to go."

"She might not have gone there," Sandy said. "The whole of the Ivory Dreaming is hers. We could search for years and never find it."

"No, she'll go." Bunny sounded quite sure. "She doesn't want them getting out any more than we do. So she'll go to check on the gates herself, just to make sure they're all right."

"Do we really need to go find this gate thing in the first place? Stuff's already gotten out, shouldn't we be focusing on those?"

"The Greater Wyrms are still asleep," Sandy whispered. "The Lesser Wyrms serve as their scouts. When they have become fat and confident, they will return to their masters and wake them. At that time, the gates must stand tall."

"Huntin' them all down would alert the big ones faster," Bunny said. He got to his feet, hitching a hand under Jack's bad leg to urge it up as well. It took a little bit of coaxing, since the whole thing still felt "Our best bet's to lure them back and shove them back in."

"Which is all well and good," Tooth said, "but we still don't know how to do that."

"There are ways."

"Like what? Bunny--"

He was already moving to the door, as if he hadn't heard. Over his shoulder, Jack saw Tooth frown as she followed them. He looked back up at Bunny's face, then tugged at a patch of fur on his ruff to get his attention. "I want to know too. What's this secret you've got?"

Bunny glanced down at him, his expression oddly set. "You'll see."

"I'm not gonna like it, is that it?"

"You'll see," he repeated firmly, and they were back outside, surrounded again by bright jarring colors. Jack cringed a little, squinting his eyes half-shut against the glare.

"You know, Bunny, have you ever considered that dodging the question might get us into more trouble later?"

"Nope."

"So are you going to tell?"

"Nope."

"I didn't think so." Jack sighed and settled back again. Part of him wanted to argue more -- to at least needle until he could maybe get Bunny angry enough to let something slip -- but the rest of him was just frankly tired. Picking a fight didn't have its normal appeal when he was stuck relying on the guy just to get around, and beyond that, he just felt on the burnt edge of exhaustion.

The feeling was coming back to his leg in degrees, like the blood returning to a sleeping limb. It stung, but that was more annoying than painful. He wriggled his toes and rolled his foot as best he could, and he tried to shake the nagging feeling that he definitely wasn't going to like whatever it was that Bunny had planned.

+++

Sandy was a man of few words, even in the Dreaming, where his voice could even be properly heard. Bunny had figured out the trick of "hearing" him long ago, and Jack was in the process of mastering it. North had a good instinct for it for guessing his meaning, and Tooth usually had the patience to go through the charades needed to get to the end of things.

But it went both ways. He'd spent many years learning how to _hear_ people, even when they weren't trying to say a word.

North was the easiest to read in turn, as open and plain as anything. He spoke his mind without artifice or hesitation, opening his arms and heart to everything.

Tooth was more guarded, but she spoke with her body as much as with her hands, and she rarely saw any reason to disguise what she felt or had to say.

Things got a bit more complicated with Jack. The Jack he knew was a girl who liked to talk, fast and endless to the point of being breathless, like she couldn't quite keep up with herself. Despite that, though, her body language was stiff to the point of being brittle. For someone who could be so fluid with her creations, there had been a lot about Jack that had been frozen as her name unless she was unaware and relaxed. Over the years, she'd begun to loosen up, and Sandy had been pleased to see the change.

This other Jack, though, while enough like the Jack he knew to be familiar, was far stiffer and more cautious. He held himself like he was bracing against the wind, rather than moving with it. Every now and then he would make some casual gesture -- a tilt of his head, a sweep of his hands -- that was completely relaxed and easy, but they were few and far between. And unlike the Jack that Sandy knew, they dwindled, rather than increased, when Bunny was around.

And then there was Bunny, of course.

For all that Sandy had known Bunny longer than any of the others -- longer than any of them had even been alive -- Bunny remained the hardest to crack, and it wasn't even because of his nonhuman features. Other pooka had been easier to read by far; some of them were even easier than humans, so used to instinctive movements of ears and nose and posture.

Bunny, on the other hand, had always seemed to pride himself on being enigmatic while still being quick-tempered and smart enough to match; it was as if he compensated for his tendency to react fiercely when his temper was roused by shutting down as much of his other reactions as possible. When he wanted to, and when he truly put his mind to it, it was like trying to figure out a blank wall. The walls lowered around the other Guardians, especially for North and for Jack, but every now and then, that grim stonefaced determination returned. The last time had been during the late middle ages, when the rumors of a hidden pooka colony had been proven entirely false, and ever since Jack, he'd been getting slowly better about not always hiding behind obsfucations.

Now, though, he was again a wall; his posture was easy and he carried Jack without effort, and his ears were up and forward, curious and listening rather than tense, but they all combined to make an entirely blank canvas.

Sandy didn't like it.

There were many things he didn't like, if he were honest; he usually choose to let them pass when they were not things he could affect -- and while he preferred being out of the spotlight, he knew that he could be far more effective than the others when he wanted it. Dreams weren't something that were meant just for children; nor were they only for sleeping. There were others who were more experienced in the shaping and herding of dreams for adults, but at its core, a dream was a dream, and there was a lot of good you could do with them, as long as you knew what you were doing.

But when it came to other spirits, his powers fell short. He could influence and tease out things if he put effort into it, like Jack's special snowflakes, but he had the feeling Bunny would be expecting and guarding against anything like that.

It wasn't that Sandy wasn't worried for their Jack as well, not at all, but at the moment, he had to admit that he was more concerned about Bunny's slow shutdown. Dragging people all the way to the Dreaming on a whim, chasing after the Lady of False Dreams without a second thought -- Tooth's question had been a good one: what did he mean to do when they arrived at the hidden prison?

Years of experience with his old friend made him pretty sure it would be something foolish. Even though he was as gentle as possible with this other Jack, there was still something shuttered in his eyes whenever they spoke. It was enough to make Sandy want to tear his hair out.

The thing about dreams, after all, was that their power lay in their _possibility_. Sandy liked to focus on sweet dreams -- pleasant things to usher sleepers into a restoring rest, and that would bring a fond smile if they were recalled after waking. But sometimes he put a little bit more push into them -- the dream of winning a state championship, of becoming a great scientist, of making friends and keeping them -- and those were as much _his_ as anything else he crafted out of his sand.

And there were dreams that were wild instead of crafted, whether by his hand, by his fellows, or by the dreamer themself. There were dreams that were what he liked to call _windows_ , because that was how they really were: windows into another time, another possibility, another _everything_. He had watched them and herded them along before, but they were difficult to tame; they would go to the sleeper they willed for, and while it was never very good to allow too many through, every now and then wasn't such a terrible thing.

One of Sandy's talents, as he liked to think of it, was understanding which ones needed to go through and which ones were chaff that could be winnowed away, spun into the source of more dreamsand to be used later. He knew better than most how thin the line between one _real_ and another could be.

And he was pretty sure that the line dividing this other Jack from the one he knew was not as thick as Bunny was trying to make it. Maybe this Jack was further back in his development; maybe this one hadn't quite yet grasped how much he was a vital and loved part of the Guardians. But he was on the way there, tentatively reaching out, and if the others hadn't noticed it after his earlier fleeing, Sandy was going to have some severe words for everyone later.

At least North had seemed to accept the fact -- but then, Sandy never really had to worry about North. Acceptance was almost second nature to the man; no matter how badly or deeply his trust was betrayed, he would always be the first to forgive at any sign of contrition. The man would forgive Pitch Black himself if Pitch made any indication of wanting it. Tooth was more cautious, but she was also warming to the boy Jack, and where their Jack had been her best friend and confidant, this other Jack was someone that she seemed willing to take under her wing, once the initial shock had worn off.

And then, again, the problem was Bunny. Bunny, who was the fiercest warrior that Sandy had ever known, who had changed over the years from a serious, subdued scholar to a creature that would rather strike first and ask questions later.

Bunny, who had, at some point, completed a bonding with Jack, and was now blinding himself to how similar the boy he now carried was to the girl he loved.

(Sandy was going to have to ask him about that. It was not always uncommon for Bunny to be unkind, but it _was_ rare for him to make a serious decision without long, long thought -- and rarer still for him to not at least give a hint of it, perfect obsfucator or not.)

(He would have to talk to Jack herself whenever they found her again, when everything was restored to its proper place and a proper amount of time had passed. She was both clever and smart, which were not always things that went easily hand in hand, but given how long it had been since the pooka had died out, it wasn't as if she could have had much reference to what such a bonding would mean. If this was how Bunny was reacting -- Bunny, who in theory should be instinctively used to what it required of him, through blood memory or star memory or whatever -- Sandy had the uncomfortable feeling it would be worse for Jack. For now, he hoped that wherever she'd found herself, she was keeping safe.)

Sanderson Mansnoozie was old -- older than the whole of the Earth itself, older than most of the other stars, older than all of the other Dreamweavers except for Dream himself. He had seen kingdoms spread into empires and flourish brilliantly before falling back into obscurity and then darkness. He had been fond of the whole of the pooka race in many ways; he'd found all of the ones he'd known to be steadfast and trustworthy, and of them all, Bunny was the one he'd liked the best -- and more for than the simple fact that Bunny was the only one left. They had been through a great deal together, before the Guardians and after them.

He moved forward faster until he was keeping pace with Bunny, who was not quite _running_ , but was definitely moving at a brisk clip. Bunny never so much as glanced at him, though his nose twitched once, betraying his awareness of Sandy's new proximity. Jack, however, lifted his head and looked at Sandy, giving him a brief lopsided grin that relieved him more than he wanted to admit.

"Hey, Sandy," he said. "Long day so far, huh?"

Sandy smiled a little in spite of himself. "It's not over yet," he murmured, letting the wind snatch his voice and his sand, so that it curled in vague facsimilies of his spoken words.

"But it's already been so exciting." He rolled his bandaged foot, wincing a little. "I have to tell you, the other thing I love more than getting tossed through portals in sacks is being carried around through some coloring-book world by a kangaroo."

Getting tossed through a portal? Sandy blinked. Before he could ask the question, Jack shrugged as best he could, adjusting his grip on his staff -- somehow managing to avoid clocking Bunny in the face.

(Sandy was pretty sure the near-miss was on purpose; he had never known anyone as in tune with something that was not literally part of themself as Jack with her -- his -- staff.)

"It's how I met most of you guys in the first place," he said.

Sandy moved higher on his little cloud, until he was about eye-level with Jack, in Bunny's arms. He didn't ask, but he did look on curiously, and he saw one of Bunny's ears twitch briefly. Bunny was listening, even if he wasn't acknowledging it. Sandy saw Jack glance up at that briefly, before he said: "Yeah, I wasn't really close to most people until the whole thing with Pitch."

Bunny growled, low and deep in his throat. Jack's eyes flickered up to his impassive face again, but when Bunny remained silent, he shrugged and went on: "I don't know how it went down here, but me, I'm having a pretty good day and this weird blur keeps catching my eye, messing up my groove. So I decide to follow it, and guess who! It's the Easter Bunny, come to distract me so that a couple of North's yeti could stuff me in a sack and throw me through a portal, straight into the workshop." He crossed his arms, still somehow managing to balance his staff, and nodded. "Loved it."

His tone was dry enough to cut. Despite that, Sandy looks to Bunny again. He was just a little surprised to see the barest hint of a smile curling the corner of Bunny's mouth, as if he was pleased by the account of his alternate self.

In all fairness, he probably was. There was little Bunny enjoyed more -- after Easter, of course -- than getting the drop on Jack Frost.

Though even that was a little strange to hear -- the hints of a Jack who hadn't been in and out of the Warren since the Easter of '68, who hadn't slowly wormed his way into the lives of his fellow Guardians until he _was_ one of them, and goodness knew how utterly (un)thrilled Bunny had been by _that_.

Jack must have seen it in his face, though, because he adjusted himself further in Bunny's arms, nearly sitting up in the crook of a furred elbow. "I take it that's not how it happened with you."

Sandy shook his head. The whole of the story wasn't a short one, and North told it better anyway. Rather than search for the breath for the words, he let his sand curl into evocative shapes: Tooth's fairies, Pitch's menacing figure, Jamie's profile. The last brought a small wistful smile to Jack's face, which Sandy made note of for later. It was another piece in the puzzle that was this other Jack Frost and the world he'd come from.

"Yeah," he said, and Sandy looked up at his face. He was still smiling, though some of the fond light had faded from his eyes; it was less nostalgic and more recollective, and there was a difference that Sandy knew very well. "It was kind of like that for us, too. You know, 'you're a Guardian now, Jack!' and Easter almost being ruined and the last-- ow, hey!" He squirmed when Bunny's arms tightened, going a little wide-eyed at the new, deeper growl that rose from Bunny's throat. "Easy there, Kangaroo!"

"Did he hurt you?"

It was the first thing Bunny had said since they'd left the Lady's cabin. Jack just stared at him, still surprised. Bunny gritted his teeth enough to show, his ears going back, and that was definitely anger in the line of his spine and in the way he slanted forward, all without breaking his stride. Sandy had to speed up a little just to keep pace. "Answer the question, Jack."

"Uh," Jack said, still wide-eyed, like he'd somehow been reminded of how dangerous Bunny could be -- had he ever really known? Sandy had to wonder. Bunny could be formidable when provoked, but his irritation ran hot and fast, while his true anger burned deep.

He didn't particularly envy Pitch, whenever he made his way back out of his prison.

"Kind of?" Jack said, and that was enough that Sandy would have tripped, if he'd been walking. "He sort of ... well, you know how bad guys can be--"

 _You have no idea,_ Sandy thought, a little bit sadly, _what a truly 'bad guy' is like._

"--offers of partnering up, 'what goes together better than dark and cold'--" and Jack's lips twisted a little as he said that, his blue eyes going flat for a few long moments, "and then when I turned him down he had Baby Tooth, so I guess I just, I mean, he wanted my staff, so--"

Bunny stopped. It was so abrupt that Sandy went on for a good distance and saw Tooth nearly collide into Bunny's back. He backtracked to be close again, and Jack's brow furrowed as he continued to stare up at Bunny's face.

"What, what is happening?" North sidestepped the crowd, around Tooth to be standing by Bunny's other side. He looked between the two of them, his brows drawn together. "What are you talking of, so secretly?"

"Uh, well," Jack said, and squirmed a little, as best he could with Bunny's arms so tightly around him, "we were talking about the stuff with Pitch and uh, hey, could you loosen up a bit? It's getting so I can't really feel my anything anymore."

"You gave him your staff?" Bunny asked. His voice was clipped almost to the point of mechanical, so calm that Sandy felt a small chill go down his spine. Bunny wasn't looking at anyone; Bunny was staring straight ahead and everything about his body language had shut down, tense and quivering and screaming things by saying nothing at all. "What the bloody hell possessed you to do that, you--"

"I told you!" Jack hunched up his shoulders, hugging the staff to his chest protectively now; frost was traveling up further than from where he normally held onto it, covering the weathered brown wood in a delicate layer of white. "He had Baby Tooth, what was I supposed to do? You guys had already kind of kicked me out, so, I mean, I was angry, but I wasn't going to let him _hurt_ her--"

"Baby Tooth?" Tooth says, her eyes wide in surprise. "Wait, _who_ had her?"

"--so I mean, it was kind of my fault in the first place, so I thought I could just, maybe if I brought her back you guys would _listen_ to me--"

"Jack," North said, and his eyes were widening with something akin to alarm now, "what are you saying--"

"--and he broke it, okay?! He broke it over his knee and he threw us into a ravine and it sucked a lot, but I fixed it. I got better." Jack gave a sharp wrench of his body, and somehow he managed to finally pull free of Bunny's hold, hovering suspended in the air before he collapsed onto the ground in an awkward heap. He lifted his head and glared at the four of them above him, his eyes sharp and defiant; his jaw was set in a scowl that would have been impressive if it wasn't just so sad. "I fixed it and I helped to save the day and that's how I became one of the important people." He laughed, and his voice was winter storm winds, subzero air and deep suffocating snows. "I proved myself that way."

Tooth covered her mouth with her hands, and she touched down carefully onto the ground, sinking into a graceful kneeling position next to him. For a moment she hesitated, so openly unsure of her reception, and Sandy could see the exact moment she decided it didn't matter, and she reached out to cover Jack's hands with her own. A tiny flinch went through her, and he knew that Jack had to be freezing to the touch, more than she would be comfortable with -- but she didn't move her hands, squeezing them gently.

"Oh, Jack," she said quietly. "Jack, it's not your fault. You didn't do anything--"

Jack's shoulders drew up together into a tighter hunch and she cut herself off, still holding onto his hands. He didn't say anything, and a moment later North copied Tooth as best he could -- a crouch rather than onto his knees, and still somehow managing to dwarf them all. He put a hand on Jack's shoulder, and the cold didn't bother him like it did Tooth, but he still frowned at whatever he felt, looking from Jack's bowed head up at Bunny, who still hadn't moved.

"Is in the past," he said. "Mistakes were made, perhaps. But if anyone can overcome, it would be you. Jack Frost."

Jack shrugged a little, a sharp upward movement of one shoulder.

And Sandy lowered himself. His sands coiled around Jack, the closest to a hug that he could offer before he was close enough to do it himself, stretching his small arms around Jack. And he _was_ cold, just like Sandy expected -- Jack was always cold, true enough, but there had always been a tiny pulse of warmth to her, a life that made the tips of her ears and nose pink, and he'd seen the same in this Jack. It was almost gone now, his skin reduced to a blank cold white.

He didn't say anything, but he also looked up at Bunny, who was still so still and so tense that it was a bit of a wonder that he hadn't simply vibrated himself to pieces.

"I did, though," Jack's voice was so soft that they all had to crane forward to hear it. "I didn't come straight back like I was supposed to -- I let Pitch trick me, and he nearly won because of it."

"Pitch," North breathed, and his frown turned even darker. "He is always so ..."

"Jack, you can't take the blame for something Pitch does," Tooth said, and her voice was sharper. "He's had years to practice that sort of thing, even if he makes you think you were doing it, you can't take all the responsibility for it!"

"He broke your staff." Bunny's voice was flat.

"And I fixed it." Jack's head came up again, and there was at least some anger in his face now, bringing a little more life to his pale face. " _And_ I saved your holiday, you know, even after I kind of ruined things, but ..."

Bunny finally tilted his head down, looking at Jack. There was something dark and thoughtful moving through his eyes know, as if he were weighing options for _something_ \-- Sandy could see them as clear as day, and another chill went through him as they went darker and darker. And even if this Jack wasn't as close to his Bunny, he seemed to recognize that as well, because his voice dried up into silence, and he was left just staring up at Bunny with his lips pressed together.

Now everyone was looking at Bunny, though at least Sandy could see that neither Tooth nor North had stopped touching Jack.

Slowly, _slowly_ , Bunny closed his eyes. He took a deep breath that seemed to expand his entire body and let it out, hissing, through his teeth.

"You're a bloody idiot," he said.

"Yeah, well, I've heard _that_ one before."

And then, a little bit to Sandy's surprise, Bunny knelt down. Tooth shifted, but didn't let go of Jack's hands, and her face was set in a sharp frown. Sandy could spare a moment to be pleased that she had finally lost the rest of her reservations. After Bunny, Jack's best friend was probably Tooth, and Tooth was a queen who commanded armies. Even if this Jack wasn't quite the same -- and from what Sandy was hearing, there were some pretty key deviations in his story -- he had been adopted all the same.

Bunny ignored that, though, reaching out and taking Jack's face in both of his hands. Jack tensed again but didn't otherwise move, staring at Bunny with wide hard eyes. Neither of them spoke during their stare-off, and even North remained silent, allowing them this strange moment.

It might have been the first time that Bunny had actually _looked_ at this Jack, Sandy thought, since this whole thing had begun. His body language was still mostly closed off, giving away very little, and there were things moving in his eyes that were too fast to read -- but Sandy could see that his hands were actually gentle on Jack's skin, the claws nowhere near close to making any contact.

Then Bunny sighed again, and it was more like a balloon deflating than anything hostile or even irritated. He slumped, but didn't let go of Jack's face.

"We gotta keep going," he said. "Do you need me to carry you still?"

It clearly wasn't what Jack had expected to hear. He blinked rapidly a few times. "Uh. Maybe?"

"What, can't keep up?" The ghost of a smile touched Bunny's lips. North and Tooth both relaxed. "You're not so heavy. I can keep carrying you."

"Excuse me?" And Jack was huffing again, but there was less defensiveness in his anger, tension bleeding out of him. It was amazing how fast he could adapt to the change in atmosphere, more effortlessly than things that had lived millennia longer than him. "It'll be a hot day at the North Pole before you beat me, Cottontail."

"Has anyone ever told you lyin's a bad thing?" And then Bunny scooped him up again, ignoring his sputtered protests. Tooth rose as well, her wings picking up speed, and North grabbed onto Bunny's arm to help haul himself up, ignoring how Bunny squawked protest -- because Bunny also braced his feet for the extra weight, and North grinned at him cheekily as they began to walk forward again -- a bit slower now, a bit more reasonably than previous.

Sandy, however, trailed a little behind now, watching the hard line of Bunny's back. Whatever he'd decided -- whether he'd truly decided to open up a little to this displaced Jack or not -- Sandy still couldn't read anything about what Bunny actually was _thinking_ , and it worried him. Bunny was very smart and very old, and sometimes those things came together in very bad ways.

He glanced up overhead, at the crayon sun pulsing gently in its false sky, and he had long since fallen out of the practice of granting or making wishes, but he crossed both of his fingers and hoped that the nagging feeling at the back of his mind was nothing more than an extension of his worry and nothing more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME:
>
>> "You've got a lot of nerve, coming here again," she said flatly. "Don't you ever get the hint?"
>> 
>> "And if I waited for an invitation," said Pitch Black, "I would be waiting forever."


End file.
